Keep Hoping Machine Running (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thefourthvine) wrote2006-10-28 10:59 pm
thefourthvine) wrote2006-10-28 10:59 pm
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Poll: Yuletide! Yay!
I am very excited about ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide, and I've been bouncing around like a crazed thing since I signed up. (This is the Anticipation phase of Yuletide. Yes, there are phases of Yuletide. Yes, I have actually written them down. I know, I know, so pathetic, but it's an important thing to me, okay? I was never that excited about the holidays as a kid, but as an adult, Yuletide makes me absolutely delirious with joy.)
Anyway. I deal with the Anticipation phase (This is actually Anticipation Part One, because sign-ups are still open. When they close, I will start hard-core Anticipation. It is dangerous to come within seven feet of me during that time.) in many ways, but in part by refreshing the requested fandoms list, so that I can admire the shiny numbers climbing ever higher. (Plus, this year, there is a festival of gold and green to admire there. You can even see how many people asked for and volunteered for a given fandom. It is the coolest thing ever!)
But the site went down briefly today. Suddenly, I had no outlet for my Yuletide glee. Hence, this poll.
And if any of you have friends listers who are also doing Yuletide, I'd love it if you'd point 'em over here, 'cause I don't know how many of my own friends listers are. (You all should, though. You get a story! In a tiny fandom of your choosing! And you can write a story that will make someone else's heart sing! And this year there is no qualifying requirement! Go, sign up, and then come back and take the poll!)
Yeah, yeah. 'Tis the season to abuse exclamation marks and the Create Poll function on LJ. Happy holidays!
[Poll #855532]
yuletide, and I've been bouncing around like a crazed thing since I signed up. (This is the Anticipation phase of Yuletide. Yes, there are phases of Yuletide. Yes, I have actually written them down. I know, I know, so pathetic, but it's an important thing to me, okay? I was never that excited about the holidays as a kid, but as an adult, Yuletide makes me absolutely delirious with joy.)Anyway. I deal with the Anticipation phase (This is actually Anticipation Part One, because sign-ups are still open. When they close, I will start hard-core Anticipation. It is dangerous to come within seven feet of me during that time.) in many ways, but in part by refreshing the requested fandoms list, so that I can admire the shiny numbers climbing ever higher. (Plus, this year, there is a festival of gold and green to admire there. You can even see how many people asked for and volunteered for a given fandom. It is the coolest thing ever!)
But the site went down briefly today. Suddenly, I had no outlet for my Yuletide glee. Hence, this poll.
And if any of you have friends listers who are also doing Yuletide, I'd love it if you'd point 'em over here, 'cause I don't know how many of my own friends listers are. (You all should, though. You get a story! In a tiny fandom of your choosing! And you can write a story that will make someone else's heart sing! And this year there is no qualifying requirement! Go, sign up, and then come back and take the poll!)
Yeah, yeah. 'Tis the season to abuse exclamation marks and the Create Poll function on LJ. Happy holidays!
[Poll #855532]
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(And if I still had finals, I don't think I could Yuletide even without the other two exchanges. Your organizing skills must be fearsome.)
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AHAHAHAHAHAHA. I wish.
I can handle the multiple NYR stories because I can do them over a period of months, and the two christmas exchanges are for my main fandoms (Pirates of the caribbean and lotrips), so I can usually tweak a story I've already had percolating. (last year, for
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Wow. Am I allowed to ask what the prompt was?
so I can usually tweak a story I've already had percolating
Ah. Good point. I hadn't thought of that, because I've never done a single-fandom exchange.
Actually, thinking about it, I've never done any exchange but Yuletide. That's - weirdly unfannish of me.
*looks nervously around to see if she will be drummed out of fandom*
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I spent three weeks whining via email & IM to my beta. It's both weirdly specific, which was infuriatingly limiting, and completely without direction, which made me tear my hair out. I suppose it didn't help that December of 2005 was smack in the middle of Depressive Crisis 2.0, which I think really influenced the eventual damn story, especially in tone, but that adds to the extent of how proud I am of myself for writing it.
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Because that's quite the challenging prompt; even translating it into fiction ("Atlantis, season three - John and Rodney really like each other, are pretty much in love, but Rodney's not attracted to John at all. It frustrates both of them. And it gets solved in the end, somehow."), I cannot imagine how I would write that. I - I just cannot even think how I'd get started, you know?
I would love to know how you did.
(And I love how we all have our old prompts ready to hand. I can still quote my most difficult one basically word for word - and it was nothing like as challenging as yours.)
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Which you really needed to know.
Anyway. It's an incrdibly hard prompt, yeah -- why do people play 'stump-the-fic-writer' on ficathons/challenges/exchanges? -- and I honestly don't remember writing it, and since I don't save drafts, I can't say how it developed. It's one of the more interesting stories I've ever written, actually, in terms of -- well, in that it's RPF, and there's tons of references throughout to fanon tropes and 'canon', and I'm not sure how well it could be read by someone not in the fandom or at least partially aware of it, but at the same time, I feel like it's a completely stand-alone story and has nothing to do with the fandom, because it doesn't use the usual characterizations or premises (premii?).
Your SGA prompt scares the willies out of me. I can't imagine that one (I mean, I couldn't imagine 'The Road' until I actually wrote it, either, so....), but I'm not sure how well even the way I handled it with Orlando and Viggo would work. It -- I don't know. I mean, it could, because I was (oh, god, this sounds so pretentious of me, it's not my fault, my entire family is made of academics, in much the same way Joe Flanigan is made of sexy fuzzy blankets and puppies) discussing the nature of friendship and relationship, the boundaries between, the way every relationship is different and responds to the needs of the people involved, the way that we tend to think ofa sexual relationship as neccesarily more than a platonic one. So John and Rodney could be thrown in, but the resolution would almost certainly be different. (Also, thank you for correcting the prompt -- I just c-and-p'd it, because I felt you needed the full horror of it, but the lack of capitalization makes my eyes bleed.)
Now you've got to share your prompt, you know.
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Oh, I so totally hear that. I used to work across the street from two often-used filming locations. (And by often, I mean we kept a whiteboard in the office of all the movies we were NOT GOING TO SEE - which inevitably turned into alternative suggestions, with rankings by office members who had seen them, but that's beside the point - because the venal weasels who ran our parking service always rented more parking spaces than they were supposed to to the crews, which meant that those of us with monthly parking never had anywhere to park. Plus, it added a ton of time to our commutes - there's nothing like being two blocks from your building and knowing it will take you 20 minutes to get there, thanks to the film crews, to build hostility. Also, the people who work film site security think they are gods. They are not; they are still just rent-a-cops. Um. Yes, some bitterness is coming through, here. I haven't worked there in years, but I still cringe when I see those sites in movies.)
why do people play 'stump-the-fic-writer' on ficathons/challenges/exchanges?
You know, I think they mostly don't. (Look. Leave me to my delusions.) The prompt you got gave me the impression that it was written to lead to a specific scene that the prompter wanted to read, but she could never figure out how to get to there or from there, so she could never write herself. (I, um. Study prompts quite a lot. On account of I give unbelievably shitty ones, and I'd like to learn how to give good ones.) It has that, "Please write an impossible story around the scene of my dreams" feel to it.
Could be wrong, of course.
Your SGA prompt scares the willies out of me.
Me, too. (I wondered if you'd look at it and be all, "Oh, that's totally easy" after your experience with the challenge last year, but I guess having done the impossible doesn't make it easier to do again.) And the thing is, I think Dasha already more or less wrote that story; I mean, not perfectly, but. Close.
And what I find interesting about the prompt is - change it into different fandoms and it looks different:
"Set after CotBP but before DMC - Jack and Will really like each other, are pretty much in love, but Will's not attracted to Jack at all. It frustrates both of them. And it gets solved in the end, somehow."
To me, that sounds like a humor piece, and I could write it, I think, pretty easily. But change Jacks, and -
"Set BEFORE season five - Jack and Daniel really like each other, are pretty much in love, but Daniel's not attracted to Jack at all. It frustrates both of them. And it gets solved in the end, somehow."
And you've got a tragedy and an explanation for season four, and again I could write it much more easily than the SGA version. Change Jacks again, and -
"Early bookverse. Jack and Stephen really like each other, are pretty much in love, but Stephen's not attracted to Jack at all. It frustrates both of them. And it gets solved in the end, somehow."
I believe we would call that "gen." And also "so much like the books that what's the point?" But it would be very hard to work in the frustration, because - for Jack and Stephen, that's exactly how they expect it to be; they are perfectly comfortable and indeed happy with love without sex. (I am not writing the essay that my brain wants to insert here. Not, not, not.)
This makes me want to ask people for example prompts they've gotten in specific fandoms and see if all prompts change violently if they're fandom-swapped like this, or if some prompts are truly universal.
Also, thank you for correcting the prompt -- I just c-and-p'd it, because I felt you needed the full horror of it, but the lack of capitalization makes my eyes bleed.
I thought maybe it would be less scary if I recast it in more, um, technically correct writing.
It wasn't, actually. Yikes.
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You're totally right, of course -- my recipent even said in her comment something about how 'it's not what I was expecting' but she was really gracious about it; I just feel like I kind of got left to figure out what she wanted without much help. Which, hello, I am a writer, I am NOT PSYCHIC.
AHEM.
I'm actually starting to think about that SGA story now. And it -- it could work. In Pirates, I actually have more trouble, because I have such trouble with pure Jack/Will (I adore Elizabeth and refuse to write her out without a very good explanation), and it just doesn't work for my reading of Will Turner -- don't get me strated on this, I can go on for hours about my fandom. I don't know SG1 at all, so can't speak to that (except that if something like this explains some part of canon? Awesome), but the Aubrey/Maturin story...yeah. That's basically the books, minus frustration because they're Jack and Stephen and they love each other and sexual attraction isn't even part of the equation.
I would be really curious to see that comparison, too, actually. Let me think:
Ocean's 11:
"Danny and Rusty really like each other, are pretty much in love, but Rusty's not attracted to Danny at all. It frustrates both of them. And it gets solved in the end, somehow."
...who in their right mind is not attracted to Danny Ocean, pease?
Classical myth:
"Achilles and Patroculus really like each other, are pretty much in love, but Achilles is not attracted to Patroculus at all. It frustrates both of them. And it gets solved in the end, somehow."
Um. No comment.
The Dark is Rising
"Will and Bran really like each other, are pretty much in love, but Will is not attracted to Bran at all. It frustrates both of them. And it gets solved in the end, somehow."
That? Could work.
I'd also be terribly interested in what...commonalities? trends? you've picked up on in requests, because I never know what to ask for. I know what I can write, and I know what I won't write, but I feel horrible asking for a specific plot, and yet I've seen people say 'I don't know she waaaaants' to many times.
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Now you've got to share your prompt, you know.
The only reason I didn't before is because it's nothing like your prompt. The thing that made it hard wasn't the prompt itself - almost any other writer could manage it quite easily - but me, and my limitations as a writer. It was:
Request 3: Mr. and Mrs. Smith (movie) (Jane Smith/John Smith)
Details: I want some hot het porn for that movie. :) But please, if you pick this, be as snarky and sharp as the movie was. ;)
And you're, like, rolling your eyes right now, right? But keep in mind that when I got this prompt, I:
- Had never written het.
- Had never written porn.
- Had never written anything that could even remotely be described as hot, except for the user/computer porn I wrote in a technical manual once. (I deleted it before it went to review. But the guys in the office said it was hot. Keep in mind, though, that these were computer nerds in their early twenties; they thought everything was hot.)
I stared at this and thought, "OMG, recipient, I am so not your Yuletide writer."But I wrote her the story anyway. And it was het, and filled with porn, and the commenters thought it was hot. So that's my Prompt Angst Triumph, but it's nothing to yours. (Also, that prompt doesn't work for fandom changeup because it's too generic; it's not a real, story-specific prompt.)
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