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Yuletide Reveals
Jan. 1st, 2024 01:51 pmThis is your annual "resurfacing from lurkdom to post my Yuletide fics" post! Had a bit of a tough writing year this year, for no obvious reason other than I was probably due one after having had some really prolific Yuletides in recent years; I was only writing treats but just lacking in any inspiration for ages and then the writing itself was painfully slow. Thought for a while I was only going to manage two stories and struggle to do that, but in the end I finished my second one with a week to spare and squeaked a third one in under the wire. All humour fics this year, for Terraria, Porridge and Blackadder.
I don't play that many recent(ish) video games so jumped at a chance to write for this one, which was possibly a mistake because I proceeded to spend far too much of the early writing period "doing canon review" in the form of playing Terraria. I knew I wanted to write something from the POV of the Guide NPC witnessing the player's bizarre behaviour, but the idea went through many different revisions: I debated whether to go with a humour or horror angle, and considered writing it in the form of reports and diary entries; I started out with the original Guide's POV from the start of the game through to the Wall of Flesh but felt that dragged too long and ended rather darkly, and also came with the issue of having to give the player character a name at some point. Ultimately I switched to the alternative of the replacement Guide's bafflement at arriving in this post-hardmode world where everyone else has had time to get used to the player's weirdness. The narrative also ended up being shaped to an extent by a mix of the particular combination of nominated NPCs and the setup of the world from my playthrough at the time.
Trying to write Porridge slash was an interesting challenge, but I was motivated by being surprised to see how little fic existed, a grand total of three crossovers on AO3. I didn't expect a lot, but I did think there'd be a bit more than that. (Of course, Yuletide going the way it does sometimes, by the time I'd finished writing this both people who'd requested the fandom had already received it for their main gift, so we managed to double the amount of fic between us!) At any rate, it was a good excuse to revisit the series, which I probably hadn't seen since the repeats I watched as a teenager in the 90s. Slightly boggling to realise it's now 50 years old; though it has its moments of 70s values, it still holds up very well. I guess the prison setting partly helps to give it a sense of timelessness, but I also watched the spin-off Going Straight for the first time and thought that was equally strong. And frankly worth the price of admission for the first episode with Fletcher and Mackay's final parting alone. All in all a bit of a nostalgia fandom I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting.
By the time I'd finished and edited my Porridge fic I had about five days left, so I turned to a reliable old standby fandom, Blackadder; I know the characters inside out, the relevant series only has six half-hour episodes, and I own the scriptbook, so it's one I can always dive right back into without needing a lot of canon review. Plus it's always great fun to write capers for! I actually ended up writing for the same person I treated last year, since I sleuthed out that the other possibility had a Blackadder fic as their main gift already (which actually turned out to be the longest story in the Yuletide collection and also written by the person I treated, so good call me). I was still editing at 4am Christmas Eve, again, but glad I persevered and got it finished.
---
What else have I been up to this year on a vaguely fannish front? Probably lots of things, but my brain is cheese. Oh, I also rewatched the first series of Yes Minister in the run-up to Yuletide, but ran out of time to watch the later series or write anything. Maybe next year! In a rare foray into currently airing TV I also watched the final series of the BBC's Ghosts, which I really enjoyed, plus the Christmas special. The latter was more of an Ending ending than I would prefer, being generally a fan of open endings where the status quo continues, but it was still fine and didn't ruin anything for me.
My project of attempting to (re)read every book I own in an effort to winnow out my bookshelves continues, albeit in slightly self-defeating style, since I finally got around to continuing with the Vorkosigan books that have been sitting on the shelf since, cough, 2004, and promptly ended up buying even more books to complete the series. (I still have the last two to pick up; I thought Mirror Dance and Memory were the strongest, but like the later books well enough that I might as well finish out the series.)
On the book front I also checked out the Lockwood & Co books when everyone was talking about the Netflix series, since I remembered enjoying Stroud's Bartimaeus books back in the day. I've read three so far and they're fine, readable YA books but not grabbing me at all fannishly. (Predictably, the main character that actually piqued my interest was Barnes; show me a group of plucky teenagers saving the day, and like a heat-seeking missile I will immediately glom onto the nearest tired middle-aged authority figure wearily trying to deal with their antics.)
...I'm sure I must have read and watched more things than this in 2023, but what were they? No idea. The passage of time, how does it work?
Don't Hate the Player (Hate the Game) [Terraria]
Perhaps a more cautious man would have stopped to ask more questions when the request for a replacement guide had come in with the reason filled out as 'spontaneous combustion'. (2800 words)
I don't play that many recent(ish) video games so jumped at a chance to write for this one, which was possibly a mistake because I proceeded to spend far too much of the early writing period "doing canon review" in the form of playing Terraria. I knew I wanted to write something from the POV of the Guide NPC witnessing the player's bizarre behaviour, but the idea went through many different revisions: I debated whether to go with a humour or horror angle, and considered writing it in the form of reports and diary entries; I started out with the original Guide's POV from the start of the game through to the Wall of Flesh but felt that dragged too long and ended rather darkly, and also came with the issue of having to give the player character a name at some point. Ultimately I switched to the alternative of the replacement Guide's bafflement at arriving in this post-hardmode world where everyone else has had time to get used to the player's weirdness. The narrative also ended up being shaped to an extent by a mix of the particular combination of nominated NPCs and the setup of the world from my playthrough at the time.
A Bit of Bottle [Porridge]
Fletcher's life is complicated by Grouty's latest scheme, some questionable craft projects, the ill-advisedness of carnal thoughts in prison, and Godber. (Fletcher/Godber, 6,900 words)
Trying to write Porridge slash was an interesting challenge, but I was motivated by being surprised to see how little fic existed, a grand total of three crossovers on AO3. I didn't expect a lot, but I did think there'd be a bit more than that. (Of course, Yuletide going the way it does sometimes, by the time I'd finished writing this both people who'd requested the fandom had already received it for their main gift, so we managed to double the amount of fic between us!) At any rate, it was a good excuse to revisit the series, which I probably hadn't seen since the repeats I watched as a teenager in the 90s. Slightly boggling to realise it's now 50 years old; though it has its moments of 70s values, it still holds up very well. I guess the prison setting partly helps to give it a sense of timelessness, but I also watched the spin-off Going Straight for the first time and thought that was equally strong. And frankly worth the price of admission for the first episode with Fletcher and Mackay's final parting alone. All in all a bit of a nostalgia fandom I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting.
Major Opportunity [Blackadder]
After being presumed dead, Blackadder seizes his chance to escape the trenches, and hopefully avoid ending up actually dead. (Blackadder/Darling, 3100 words)
By the time I'd finished and edited my Porridge fic I had about five days left, so I turned to a reliable old standby fandom, Blackadder; I know the characters inside out, the relevant series only has six half-hour episodes, and I own the scriptbook, so it's one I can always dive right back into without needing a lot of canon review. Plus it's always great fun to write capers for! I actually ended up writing for the same person I treated last year, since I sleuthed out that the other possibility had a Blackadder fic as their main gift already (which actually turned out to be the longest story in the Yuletide collection and also written by the person I treated, so good call me). I was still editing at 4am Christmas Eve, again, but glad I persevered and got it finished.
---
What else have I been up to this year on a vaguely fannish front? Probably lots of things, but my brain is cheese. Oh, I also rewatched the first series of Yes Minister in the run-up to Yuletide, but ran out of time to watch the later series or write anything. Maybe next year! In a rare foray into currently airing TV I also watched the final series of the BBC's Ghosts, which I really enjoyed, plus the Christmas special. The latter was more of an Ending ending than I would prefer, being generally a fan of open endings where the status quo continues, but it was still fine and didn't ruin anything for me.
My project of attempting to (re)read every book I own in an effort to winnow out my bookshelves continues, albeit in slightly self-defeating style, since I finally got around to continuing with the Vorkosigan books that have been sitting on the shelf since, cough, 2004, and promptly ended up buying even more books to complete the series. (I still have the last two to pick up; I thought Mirror Dance and Memory were the strongest, but like the later books well enough that I might as well finish out the series.)
On the book front I also checked out the Lockwood & Co books when everyone was talking about the Netflix series, since I remembered enjoying Stroud's Bartimaeus books back in the day. I've read three so far and they're fine, readable YA books but not grabbing me at all fannishly. (Predictably, the main character that actually piqued my interest was Barnes; show me a group of plucky teenagers saving the day, and like a heat-seeking missile I will immediately glom onto the nearest tired middle-aged authority figure wearily trying to deal with their antics.)
...I'm sure I must have read and watched more things than this in 2023, but what were they? No idea. The passage of time, how does it work?
