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Posts Tagged ‘fanfiction’

Yuletide guessing game

I don’t know how many of you reading this participated in Yuletide (or at least have been reading through some percentage of the collection), but I might as well toss out some bait for interested parties to try and guess what I wrote.

Nota bene: do NOT go look at my page on the AO3 to see what I’ve written in the past. There’s a bug that causes the fandoms my stories are in to be displayed, even for the stories that are still anonymous. It pretty much gives the game away.

This year I went a bit overboard and produced six stories. (This is a bit of a problem; last year I wrote four, which means next year my OCD brain is going to want me to write eight. At least.) One was my assignment, one was a pinch-hit, and four were treats. Several of those were supposed to be stocking stuffers (meaning less than a thousand words), but they all ended up higher: four were in the 1000-2000 word range, one was 2000-3000, and one was 3000-4000.

I wrote for three stage productions of one stripe or another, two movies, one TV show, one book, and one piece of art. If those numbers don’t seem to add up to six, that’s because three of the fics are crossovers, and I wrote in one fandom twice. Only one is a fandom I’d written in prior to this Yuletide.

Any guesses?

(And yes, we intend for regular posting here to resume before long.)

What I Got for Yuletide (a bit belated)

I’ve been extremely uncommunicative lately — and my apologies if I owe you an e-mail, which is quite a lot of you — but I’m breaking radio silence just before I go home to link you all to the story I got for Yuletide, which is absolutely beautiful.

“The Cautery Wind” combines two of my Elfquest-related suggestions: for my assigned writer to make up their own tribe in the World of Two Moons, and to give backstory for one of the original four tribes from canon (in this case, the Sun Folk). It’s darker than more Elfquest, but in an appropriate way; it picks up on the threads of darkness that are already in the series, and looks at them head-on. The frame is Savah telling a story that Skywise and Timmain need to hear, and it contains more lovely notes than I can list about what it means for the Mother of Memory to want to forget something, what it means for Skywise to have changed the way he did in Kings of the Broken Wheel, what the relationship between Skywise and Timmain is about, and what the differences (and similarities) are between elves and humans. To name just a few of the things I loved about it.

The story probably won’t mean a lot to people who haven’t read the series, but if you know Elfquest, go read this story. It’s a wonderful fan-made addendum to the canon.

progress, for realz

Got a draft of my Yuletide story last night. It’s off to be read by fresher eyes than mine, and then I’ll revise it, and get the whole shebang posted not quite as far in advance of the deadline as I’d initially hoped. πŸ™‚

On the basis of what I wrote last year, I find myself feeling bad that this story is so short, and will certainly be shorter than at least one of the treats I’m thinking of writing. I sort of feel like it, being my assignment, should be the longest thing I produce for Yuletide. Which is silly, of course: any given idea has a natural length (or range thereof), and bigger has no correlation with better. But still.

I’m really happy with my title, though. It came to me about halfway through the process, with no effort at all; the ones that do that are usually my favorites. Titles I have to sweat for rarely end up feeling more than adequate to me. (With Fate Conspire is something of a special case, given the process behind that one. It was more work than any other title I’ve ever put on a piece of writing, but I was very pleased with it in the end.)

Yuletide fic is a go! Now where is it going . . . .?

I’ve finally started on my Yuletide fic — started properly, I mean, and not just the fifty words I slapped down a few days ago because I felt like I really ought to have made more progress by now. Found the right tone for the story today, and at least some of the right format; I say “some of” because this is a decidedly odd story, from a decidedly odd source, and it remains to be seen whether the approach I’m taking will sustain the thousand-word minimum for Yuletide. Possibly not, in which case I’ll need to find something else to slide into the break-points that have been appearing along the way. But I’m not yet sure what that should be.

Structure is so often the kicker, ain’t it? I’ve started a treat, too, because I got mugged by an idea for something else, and that one mostly needs me to figure out what beats have to happen, in what order. Now that my subconscious has chewed on my assignment enough to start swallowing some of it (ew — not the best metaphor ever), the treat is going on the back-burner, but I think both of them are going to turn out very well, in very different ways.

“The Aurors” signup closes tomorrow

Tomorrow evening at 8 p.m. EST, I think, though to be honest it actually closes whenever I get around to editing the settings, so it’ll probably be some time after that. Anyway, you have another thirty hours or so to sign up.

Don’t remember what I’m talking about? Here’s the blurb:

Are you fan of cop dramas on TV? Is Mad-Eye Moody one of your favorite Harry Potter characters? Ever wish the series had chucked Quidditch in favor of more Defense Against the Dark Arts?

Then you would like The Aurors, the TV show that, alas, never existed. Except here, in fanfic form! This is a prompt meme inspired by that fan “trailer,” for readers and writers who would love to see a grittier, more adult Harry Potter, focused on the men and women (and possibly some non-humans, too) who defend both the wizarding and Muggle worlds against evil magic.

You have until January 8th to write your story, so don’t worry if Yuletide or other holiday obligations are breathing down your neck. And if you need an AO3 invite, just let me know; I have several.

The Aurors

Back on April Fool’s Day, somebody posted this video, a “trailer” for a TV show that doesn’t exist but should: “The Aurors.”

starlady38 tried to nominate it for Yuletide, but it didn’t make it through to the final list. However, that doesn’t stop us from doing RENEGADE YULETIDE RARRRR a private exchange of our own. If you’d be interested in writing, basically, a “cop drama” story set in the Harry Potter world, leave a comment here and let her know. We don’t have specifics yet, and there’s no commitment; this is just to get a rough head-count before working out the actual mechanics of the exchange.

. . . man, I would love to see that show be real. Alas, this is the closest I can come. πŸ™‚

holy crap

<hands on hips>

Okay, who is/are the overachiever(s) that already uploaded three fics to the Yuletide collection? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PEOPLE, ASSIGNMENTS WENT OUT A FEW HOURS AGO.

Thanksgiving Advent, Day Twenty: Yuletide

I’ve talked about Yuletide before, but as signups for it closed this evening, I was reminded that it’s a thing to be thankful for. Why? Because exchanges of that kind are a fun form of gift-giving, surprising somebody with a story written just for them. And while there are lots of exchanges built along these general lines, Yuletide is the two-thousand-pound gorilla on the scene — if the gorilla was made of fannishness and squee, and flailed around being happy and excited, occasionally grabbing people and sweeping them up into great big hugs.

I’m thankful for it because, as I’ve said before, fanfiction is one realm where story goes back to being pure play. Not that I don’t love my work — I’ve already said that I do — but it’s valuable to have a realm in which I can chill a bit more, and not worry about all the concerns that go with writing fiction for a living. The end of the year is, for me, a particularly good time to do that. I’ll be sending off the revised draft of A Natural History of Dragons soon, and once that’s out the door . . . well, okay, there’s something else after that which has a deadline, too. And technically Yuletide has a deadline. But my point is, writing my story for that will feel like a reward. Which is a thing to be thankful for, at this time of year.

for the Yuletide-interested

Fandom nominations have opened. If you haven’t been following the admin community, be aware there are some changes: three fandoms, four characters each, and only characters who have been nominated will be eligible for requests or offers. There’s a partial list of ineligible fandoms, as well as a post (with spreadsheet) for what people intend to nominate (so people can avoid duplication) and a post for what has been nominated so far (since the official list won’t be visible until it’s over).

You have until 21:30 EST (edit: on Monday, sorry to have left that bit out) to get your nominations in; signups will open soon after.

Happy Yuletiding!

London Incarnate

Normally I’m not a big fan of AU crack, which is to say, fanfics where the author has thrown in something totally random (“what if Frodo and Sam became pirates?”) that really doesn’t relate to the original source.

There are exceptions.

This is one of them.

It’s a fic for the new BBC series Sherlock, the one that updates the characters to the modern day. You don’t have to have seen the series, I think, to enjoy the story. But if you’ve read the Onyx Court books . . . yeah. Especially With Fate Conspire. It’s so much of what I think about London, in terms of its history and the relationship between a city and its people, with lots of little details that ring such familiar bells for me. gollumgollum pointed me at it, and I’m so glad she did.

Go. Read. Enjoy.

Answers, Round Two

Continuing with the open question thread. Head over there if you want to add anything to the list.

***

teleidoplex asked, If somebody were to ship your characters, what would be the _most wrong of all wronginess_ ship you could possibly imagine, and why?

A corollary to this: if someone were to write a crossover between the Onyx Court books and another series, what cross would you most want to see, and what cross would make your soul shrivel and die in your body?

Oh good lord.

Okay, crossover first. I actually discussed at one point with matociquala, but never followed through on, the two of us running a joint fanfic contest for her Blood and Iron/Ink and Steel and my Midnight Never Come. Because they are Elizabethan faerie fantasies that almost but not quite step on each other’s narrative toes, and it just sort of seems natural to see what might happen when you overlay one on the other.

What would make my soul shrivel and die? I dunno, really. Possibly my brain is protecting me against the answers, because I can’t think of anything that seems suitably awful. But then, I’m not very good at the crossover thing to begin with: either my brain mugs me with the perfect idea (e.g. Hogfather/Nightmare Before Christmas) or it turns up a total blank. I’d probably vote for some really bad Elizabethan faerie fantasy, but I try to avoid reading those, so I can’t name one suitably awful. Maybe a time-traveling crossover with, like, Mercedes Lackey’s modern-day elf-punk urban fantasies, just for the tonal disconnect.

Most wrong of all wronginess ship . . . well, let’s avoid things that are wrong in the “that person is underage, yo” way (not that there are a lot of kids in my stories) and try for brain-melty wrongness instead. Leaving short stories out of it — because I’m too lazy to think through them all — let’s go with Nadrett (from With Fate Conspire) and the Goodemeades (from any point in the series timeline). Because, just, what? No. (I was going to pair them with Invidiana, but really, if you tilt your head at the right angle and squint, that one could maybe make sense. Nadrett, on the other hand — no. Just no.)

***

tooth_and_claw asked, Are you coming to visit Bloomington anytime soon? πŸ˜‰

Bloomington, probably not. GenCon, possibly, as it would be a much more effective bang for my plane-ticket buck. A lot will depend on how next summer shapes up.

***

sandmantv asked, What is a villain?

I’ve talked about this issue before, but that was mostly from the angle of “why I prefer to write antagonists instead of villains.” For me, I think the break point has to do with whether the character in question believes they’re acting for the greater good, or knows they’re acting selfishly and doesn’t care. The nobleman who thinks sheep need a shepherd can be an antagonist, even if he’s horribly mistreating his peasants. The nobleman next door who truly only cares about his own pleasure can be a villain, even if his peasants are actually better-off than his neighbor’s.

I don’t know if that makes any sense or not outside of my own head, but in here, it works.

update on parallelsfic

I went ahead and put in some nominations for , with a specific eye toward variety: one Hong Kong source (The Bride with White Hair, an awesome old-school kung fu fantasy flick), one Korean (The Good, the Bad, the Weird, a crazy 1930s Western), one Indian (the Ramayana, because it’s a more manageable epic than the Mahabharata), and one Japanese (K-20: The Fiend With Twenty Faces, aka the alternate-history Art-Deco-punk superhero movie I keep meaning to make a post about). In general I tried to go with the theme of “crazy fun;” the only reason I nominated the Ramayana instead of Om Shanti Om was that somebody had already beaten me to the latter. πŸ™‚

Anyway, I still don’t know for sure if I’ll be participating; you’re required to offer four sources, and so far — apart from my own nominations — there’s only barely enough things listed that I feel I know well enough to write. But nominating isn’t a commitment to participate, so I figured why not.

Nominations are open until the 25th.

in which I post ALL the writing links!

Seriously, I’ve got a lot of these piled up.

First: genarti! Congratulations! You have won the “ARC and Desk Delivery Day” giveaway. Email me your address (marie dot brennan at gmail dot com), and I’ll get that on its way to you.

Second, you have a chance to win a complete set of the Onyx Court books by bidding in Brenda Novak’s 2011 Auction, raising money for diabetes research. That runs until the end of the month, so you have about twelve days left to bid. (The prize will ship in summer, when I receive my author copies of With Fate Conspire, or I can arrange to send the first three earlier if desired.) Also, there are lots of other awesome things on offer there, so go browse.

Third, you also have until the end of the month to buy one or more of my stories from AnthologyBuilder, and get a dollar off the cover price. (Fuller details here.)

Fourth, some of you may be interested in , a Yuletide-style fandom exchange for Asian fandoms (e.g. Japanese anime, Bollywood, Hong Kong action flicks, etc). Nominations are open until the 25th, and I’m vaguely tempted to participate; I had fun writing my K-20 story for Yuletide last year. I’m waiting to see how many of the nominated sources I know well enough to write, though, since a lot of the current ones are totally unknown to me.

Fifth, for the language wonks reading this, “Singular ‘they’ and the many reasons why it’s correct.” I am a big proponent of “they” as a gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun, largely because it’s one we’ve been using for that exact purpose for centuries now, and it’s a lot more graceful than “he or she” and similar constructions. Mind you, I do find it unsatisfactory for referring to a specific individual who doesn’t fit into standard gender categories; for whatever reason, in those cases my brain seizes up on the apparent plural meaning of the word. (And it’s politer anyway to use whatever pronoun such a person prefers, though that can be hard to do — and the pragmatist in me does wish we could settle on a single alternative, rather than the motley assortment currently in use.) But for sentences like “everyone took out their books,” or referring to somebody whose gender identification is unknown (frex, somebody you only know online), I like “they.” We’re already using it; I think grammar pedants should accept it.

That’s enough for now, I suppose. There may be other link salad-style posts in the future, though; Firefox’s new tab-grouping setup has really encouraged my tendency to hoard these things. :-/

Subscriptions!

An Archive of Our Own has, after much anticipation, reached a point where they can implement subscriptions. This means that AO3 users can set their accounts up to be notified when a writer they like posts a new story. (I have no idea if I’m likely to post anything before next Yuletide, but the nice thing about subscriptions is it’s no big deal if I don’t; you just won’t get notifications. I’m faviconrussian_blue, if you care.)

I’ll have to see how this particular implementation of the idea works out in practice, but man, I still want something like it for pro fiction. Obviously it’s harder in some ways to implement — the AO3 is a single database; a short story subscription manager would have to scrape updates from a bunch of different online magazines — but if there was a central service I could use to be alerted when short story authors I like publish something new, something along the lines of an RSS reader, I would sign up so fast my keyboard would be smoking.

But I wouldn’t know where to begin in coding something like that. So I sit here and make begging eyes, and hope that if I mention it enough times, the idea will spread until it lands in the brain of somebody who can do it.

seeking a fanfic

I read part of a fic some time ago, and can’t remember the title or the author’s name or even where I read it (though I thought it was AO3) — anyway, the story was a crossover that began with Anyanka (of Buffy) and Lois Lane (of Superman) in a bar, and then pulled in lots of other stuff as it went along. Anybody remember this one?

as the industry moves online

An Archive of Our Own, one of the big fanfic sites, is working on implementing “subscriptions,” where you can designate particular authors (or fandoms or tags or what-have-you) and be informed when new stories get posted.

It occurs to me that, as more and more short fiction publishing moves online, how useful this could be. I mean, I post links when stories of mine go up, so if you read my LJ you hear about those things. But that requires you to follow a bunch of different separate feeds, and it buries the story links in the noise of everything else you read. Maybe some online ‘zines tag their stories in a way that allows you to tell Google Reader or whatever, tell me whenever Clarkesworld publishes a Cat Valente story — I don’t know; I haven’t tried — but if she then publishes a story in Lightspeed instead, you won’t know about it. How technically difficult would it be to create an aggregator site that covers all the online ‘zines (ending at whatever bar the site’s operator chooses), and then once you pick an author from their database, notifies you whenever that author publishes something, wherever it might be? I have no idea; IANenough of a webgeek to do that kind of thing myself. I imagine it would require some amount of cooperation from the publisher’s side, tagging the pages according to the aggregator’s requirements, etc. The benefit, however, is that it drives traffic to your site; and if I discover a lot of the writers I’ve subscribed to are being published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, I might start checking out who else they print, because clearly that place fits my taste. (Heck, print magazines could even benefit, with a blog that advertises the latest ToC.)

I dunno — maybe it would weaken the sense of loyalty to particular publications in favor of the writers. We still haven’t solved the problem of funding online magazines, and if something like this makes it harder for Strange Horizons to raise money, etc, because people are no longer self-identifying as “SH readers” but readers of one author or another, then that would be a problem. But if you really like Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya stories, it would be neat to have something automatically alert you when one of them pops up, even if it’s in a place you don’t normally look. It seems to me this fits with the a la carte trend I’m seeing in how we consume media: Tivo to pull down the programs we want to watch, iTunes selling us individual tracks instead of whole albums, etc. I’m reading some serialized stories online, and I know having new chapters pop up in my reader, without me having to go check for updates, is damned convenient. If short story publishing in general had something like this, I’d use it in a heartbeat.