Erin Erin Bo-Berin

What? A post to my own personal dreamwidth? It must be October and time for a Dear Author letter. Well, here we have it. My nineteenth Yuletide, and still going strong! (If you're just scoping out letters and finds something that interests you, treats are enabled on my account.)

Requested fandoms this year:

* Elsinore (Video Game)
* The Frogs - Sondheim/Shevelove/Lane
* Love's Labour's Lost (2000)
* The Outbursts of Everett True (Comics)
* Tress of the Emerald Sea - Brandon Sanderson
* When you see a lore video for a franchise you know nothing about (Short Film - Sir Matteus)

The letter itself proceeds behind the cut!

( Dear Yuletide Author... )

Diz Does Yuletide: Part 17!

Here we go again!

Before we get down to the meat of the letter, some admin. First, if you're not my assigned author and wandering by and wondering, I do have gifts enabled on the AO3 and am happy to receive treats.

Second, my requested fandoms this year are as follows:
* When you see a lore video for a franchise you know nothing about (Web Video)
* Can I Get There By Candlelight? - Jean Slaughter Doty
* Brandy (You're a Fine Girl) - Looking Glass (Song)

Super excited for all of this. Yay, Yuletide! And now onto some optional details (which are optional).

( Dear Yuletide Author... )

Oh boy, here we go again for my fifteenth time...

( Dear Yuletide Author, )

Not only is there a tag set for Yuletide, there's actually a post on this journal! You know what that must mean...

( Dear Yuletide Author, )

Because hey, even if I don't use this journal for anything else over the course of the year, we'll always have this.

( Dear Yuletide Author, )

... which means it must be time for...

( Dear Yuletide Author... )

First thing's first, as it's reveal day and all...

Massive thanks to floraheart for my exceptionally fabulous Yuletide fic, and to who_la_hoop, laura47, and McTabby for my delightful madness ficlets! All of them are linked here for anyone who missed them.

Moving on. This is probably the first year ever that I actually wrote enough to really justify an end-of-year fic meme. So, shamelessly stolen from shadowen, here we go!

Starting with the objective stats...
Total stories: 14.25 (2012 saw chapter one in a four chapter WIP, but not chapters 2-4.)
Total word count: 21,954
Average word count per story: 1,541
Average word count per month: 1,830
Longest story: Lifeline: 5,130 words
Shortest story: Last to Know: 237 words
Fandoms: 2 (Thank you, yuletide.)
Pairings: 2 (I was rescued solely by having backup Tony/Steve in one of them. Because, y'know, C/C.)

( On to the much more subjective questions )

Dear Yuletide Writer!

( Yay, you want to write for me! )

Yeeeeah, I'm definitely going back to crossposting to my LJ from DW consistently... on those occasions I post, which is rare, but I'd like it to be less so. There's a new year's resolution for you. A good chunk of my LJ-flist is doing the same, for reasons that probably don't need rehashing.

Anyway, anyone who's made the DW jump, feel free to circle me up however you'd like. Same username from LJ.

Right! Anyway! As for content! First thing's first! Yuletide!

It's always fun when the fic you receive is in the canon you requested that really, nobody needs any crazy canon knowledge in order to appreciate.

That being said... A bajillion thanks to my author, who wrote me Rest In Whirled Peace. It's Ben & Jerry's anthropomorfic and they're ice cream superheroes. I mean, come on, how can you not want to read that?

After I finished reading that... a couple times... I proceeded to show just how obsessed I was and read absolutely every fic with one Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD in the Yuletide archive. (And then I did it again the next day with Madness.) And believe me, they're all delightful, whether or not my favorite NINJA BAMF IN A SUIT is a main character or not, so please, by all means, read them and enjoy if you remotely care.

There are, of course, numerous other fics that bear reading, but I really really suck at rec lists, and most of them have been covered in other places if you're looking for recs, so far be it from me to tread on old ground.

And now, changing trajectory slightly...

Sheer morbid curiosity had me do something in a fit of temporary what-was-I-thinking-ness last night. And I happened to actually find something hiding in the mists of the internet that I thought didn't exist anymore. That being what I'm pretty sure is my oldest surviving piece of (published) fanfic. It's X-Files, it was written when I was nineteen or so... give or take a year (we're talking so old I found it on an angelfire archive). The prose is ever so slightly purple. (Ahah. Yeah. Ever so slightly.) And I kinda wanna facepalm at my younger self for the thing, if not so badly as some of the ridiculous Mary Sues I safely paper-journaled about a few years before that. And I have a conundrum. Should I post it to the AO3, with a roughly appropriate backdate? I mean, for the interests of completeness, and to see how far I've come... but, again, facepalm. But I wouldn't want to orphan it either.

Hm. Maybe with appropriate tags to let someone know what they'd be getting into.

I'll contemplate further!

And in a brief interlude covering RL... Still sadly jobless... although it being my first Christmas season out of retail since, like, '03 or so? Let's just say it was a bit surreal being home on Black Friday.

But Christmas was marvelous. Got a Kindle Fire from Andrew and it is a ridiculously fun gadget. I'll definitely be using it as a tablet more than an ereader, though. (I've got my nook for that... Had a Sony Reader, but I broke it, oops, thank God for squaretrade... But I got reimbursed and went for a new model. Thing is LOADED with fanfic now, I love it.) But man, Angry Birds is so much nicer on that screen than my phone's. >_> He also got the LotR extended edition on bluray for my whole family, to go with the huge TV we got earlier this month. :) In addition, as I commented on twitter on the day, I really appreciate socks and underwear as gifts so much more now than I did as a kid.

Also, the presents I gave were pretty much universally well-received, which always makes me extremely gratified. I love picking out the perfect present. Although the individual that expressed the most joy was, of course, my dog, who got a squeaky toy and went into transports of delight. Good times.

Anyway, wow, I think I've just said more than I've said in ages combined, so I'll leave it at that! TTFN!

Okay. First thing's first.

MANY. MANY. MAAAAAAANY thanks to amatara for the fabulous Bearing Witness which OMG YOU SHOULD HAVE READ ALREADY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU IF YOU HAVEN'T.

Um. Yes, anyway. Yes! Thank you! You wrote a brilliant fic, thank you thank you thank you.



Now... for the two I wrote.

First for my original assignment: For andraste, I wrote A Letter, Delivered by a Raven, to a Small Cottage in the Elven Village of Ivyleaf, Home of an Apprentice Baker. Probably the longest title I've ever used for a fanfic ever. XD It's Order of the Stick fic! Which... well, if you're not familiar with that particular webcomic, go and avail yourself of it, because it's awesome. If you are, it's a letter written by V. Which... led to some interesting moments when I was like... must be more unnecessarily wordy! Chop chop! :) It was very fun to write and the prompt was kind of great.

Second, for the pinch hit I managed to nab and... well, I got a rather enthusiastic reaction.

For melannen, one of the seven fics she got for the same prompt, aaaah!, Packet Switching. Anthropomorfic. Fandom/LJ, Fandom/DW. Awesome prompt, spawned lots of awesome fic, and I have to say I'm actually kind of ridiculously fond of mine, so... yay! :D


That was so fun. Is it next yuletide yet? :b