tinpra | Entries tagged with yuletide

When I lose my mind trying to do both

yuletide (or yuletide if you want more info) and NaNoWriMo. Ostensibly, this is doable. There's about 2 weeks between the end of Nano and the due date for your yuletide story. In practice...crazypants. Just crazypants. To be honest, I'd only planned on doing yuletide this year if only b/c the wordcount is a lot less grueling, and I'm working on something that I don't want to put down in order to do a proper nano. But

lieueitak has pretty much convinced me to throw my hat in the nano-ring. Lord help.

So, there may be many posts of glee! Of squee! Of worry! Anyone else participating? :D

Or all those posts will end up on the journal for my alter-ego, since she's the one who does all the fanfic writing. Who knows. Anywho...

Happy Crazy Writing Season!

Yuletide assignments have gone out, NaNoWriMo music swap assignments have gone out, my work week of insanity is OVER, my phone is unbricked (longish, traumatizing story), I am semi-flopped on my couch watching k-dramas and it looks like LJ won't be screwing us over with the crazy f-list redesign. Life is good!

Oh Fandom...how I love you...

Originally posted by

xmarisolx at The Prayer of the Fanfic Writer

Notamod, but I think this is kosher:

It's that time of year again for the...

The Prayer of the Fanfic Writer
(Originally posted here)

I thank you Lord for Showtime
And underground rock bands
For those that make our foreign films
I pray you bless their hands

I thank you, Lord, for anime
And manga from Japan
( Read more... )

I just realized that, although I nominated fandoms for

yuletide, I didn't actually sign up. Sad tinpra is sad. :(

Look at the pretty gift the

yuletide fairy has sent me! I tend not to go blazing through the archives until later (some time this week I'm sure) and so won't have a comprehensive list o' recs for a week or more, but I didn't want to miss out on reccing the fic that was written for me. Woohoo small fandom festiveness!

Is anyone else on the flist using An Archive of Our Own or AO3 for short? Even if you aren't, does anyone have thoughts on the site? Anyone participating or following

yuletide will know that the seasonal challenge has moved its archive over to the AO3 site.

If you don't know how I feel about it. I remember when the site started making self-announcements via various comms, and I wasn't sure what I thought about it then. If for no other reason than having to remember to post a fic in one more place is a pain in the petard, I was reluctant to join. However AO3 is affiliated with, or is the working arm of, the Organization for Transformative Works, or the OTW. My issue with the OTW lies partly with their premise of fanwork being a transformative work, transformative works being important and legit, and thus fanwork is imp and legit.

I have no problem with saying fanwork is transformative: it can be. I have no problem with saying fanwork is important: it can be. I am saying, however, that we are by and large treading on someone's intellectual property (as all you flist-y people know I'm a fanfic writer/reader, and I used to make very poor graphics), which makes what we do illegal to a certain extant. Hence all those lovely cease-and-desist letters that authors, corporations, etc., can send to sites and writers. So with that in mind, that fans producing fanwork are treading on thin mushy legal ground, I am wary of jumping on either the AO3 or OTW bandwagons, though I completely understand where they're coming from. God knows I have sometimes labored (perhaps much too hard) on some of my fanworks, and that I have read some stories that have deeply effected and affected me. My fanfic is important to me, but I realize the tenuous legitimacy it has.

And it this point it would have been nice for the OTW to clearly define "transformative" in it's legal terms, which are the ones it is using, vs. it's popular one. According to Wikipedia (that bastion of all knowledge): In United States copyright law, transformation is a possible justification that use of a copyrighted work may qualify as fair use, i.e., that a certain use of a work does not infringe its holder's copyright due to the public interest in the usage. Transformation is an important issue in deciding whether a use meets the first factor of the fair-use test, and is generally critical for determining whether a use is in fact fair, although no one factor is dispositive.

There are certainly court decisions, legal happenings and university studies regarding fannish work, but I still don't know what that means for the guys and gals on the internet street. Not in the long run at least. Some people, and by ppl I mean TV folks and writers and corporate folks, etc, don't seem to much care what we do. Or they encourage it b/c it helps ratings. I dunno. Other ppl care desperately--both for and against.

So...after all of that ( :s ) what do you guys think of AO3? Just another fansite? The greatest thing to happen to fan-writers ever? Something that's going to come back to bite us on the collective fannish butt some time in the future? Will AO3 even be able to sustain itself? Look at all the concessions and changes FF.net has had to make in its tenure that had less to do with fan and system-server needs, and more to do with legal pressures, etc.

(On that same note, since I am a member of AO3 (all '09 and future yuletide writers are) I have AO3 invitations if anyone wants one.)

Blessed be the name of the Lord God Almighty...my Yuletide story is done and posted.

*faints*

less than 24hrs to finish my yuletide story and i'm stuck.

argh.

First things first: Yuletide post in. What have I gotten myself into. Will be re-reviewing this fandom hardcore.

Second things: So as I've been hinting at over the last few weeks that I've been dating this guy. Well dating might be too strong a word seeing as how today was our second date.

We were set up by an elder at my church who has literally known me since before I was born. He does work for her and seemed like a good guy. In her own words, if she'd be happy if her own daughter was dating him. So he comes well recommended. The elder put us in contact w/each other and we worked out a first date. Which failed because I pulled my achilles tendon (and thanks again to

moony_blues for the advice that kept me able to stand at work). So we rescheduled to the coming Tues and went to Applebees. We started talking on a Tues, we finally saw each other on the next Tues. And we talked every day in between.

( Read more... )

I'm sorry...I'm behind on my nano, and thus I'm a little frazzled by Yuletide letter writing, too! Seriously. I forgot what I signed up for and had to find my signup email (thank you Yuletide admins!). Please, forgive me if this is a very incoherent letter. Last year I Yuletided, but didn't NaNo, and now I know why.

So if you have me, it's for one of the following: Babylon 5, Martha Wells' The Fall of Ile-Rien series, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, or Sharon Shinn's The Twelve Houses series. Seriously? I'm easy. I like character exploration, but I like a good action scene, too. The only thing I want to avoid are slash and femmeslash, and NC-17 ratings for either sex or violence.

But if I must be specific: ( and I'll cut it to spare the flist who are all scratching their heads wondering what the heck I'm up to now. )

So I almost had a complete and total freak out on the way home. I was the first one home tonight and so picked up the mail. Among the stuff was a letter for me from Children International, through whom I sponsor a child. My sponsor child (who is awesome) lives in the Philip pines, near-ish where all the flooding has happened because of the typhoon. Now the last time I checked the Children International, specifically regarding the situation in the Philippines, they said that her area was okay and gave info on how to donate to help the affected area. But they also said that their policy is to notify sponsors if anything had happened to their children. And here I was...getting a letter. My first thought was that something happened to my kid. And then I thought that was silly, it could be anything. And then halfway up the stairs I had to know and opened the envelope (which was already open, but that's a diff issue).

My mthly sponsorship charge hadn't gone through.

There was an issue w/my new bank card that meant I had to get a new-new one, and I had actually called in the new info and paid the sponsorship so this letter was just crossing me in the mail, so to speak, but I was so incredibly relieved and thankful to God. I don't think of my sponsorship child as if she were my child, but I do think of her like one of my church kids or my neighbor girl. They're all very important to me. They're my young people. I'm infinitely interested in their lives; I want to be a resource for them; I want to be someone they can trust. I want them to be well and safe. Same thing for my kid. She does so well! I'm so proud of her. Every letter is amazing, and watching her grow up through pictures is equally so. I would have been devastated if that letter had been anything but the crazy sponsorship thing or some other of the regular official mail. But it was so now I'm good! :D

On a totally different note: Fandom is gearing up for

yuletide once more (if you've never heard of Yuletide, check out the archive). Nominations for fandoms-to-write are open. I 'm a wee overwhelmed by the idea of nomming fandoms. I mean I know it's for obscure fandoms, but I don't think that really cuts down the choices any! Last year was my first yuletide and it went well. I'm planning on doing it again. At least right now I am. Last year I wasn't doing NaNo so...

One of the fics that was written for me (Mnemurgist by

allburning) is on the

yuletide story of the day list :D

...but recs too! Admittedly most of the fic (still backlogging my fanfic reading) I note are things I would recommend to someone, but that's partly because those are the ones I review and thus are the ones I have a record of. I go through a lot more fic than what I note. Luckily for me I tend to go through them quickly :D Although there is the occasional story that starts well and ends gag.

Anywho, on to my yuletide reading and rec list. ( FINALLY! )

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Location: couchage

my yuletide story is finally on the list! *dances* unfortunately with the your/you're error that was later fixed in the text, but that's neither here nor there! *dances s'more*

Aaaand this reminds me I still have more reading list to post, including my yuletide reads, especially the two that were written for me.

I don't know if I mentioned here, b/c I certainly burned my coworker's ear with it, but my mother has been getting on me lately about my wardrobe. Or lack of same. Over the last 5 years or so, I've let my "grown up" wardrobe go to pieces since I don't really need it at work. And I usually don't care. Unfortunately this has also included my wardrobe for church. I've lucked out in that we're not a super-fancy church and I don't need diamonds and pearls to be presentable. Showing up fully dressed and halfway decent is really enough for us...but I know I can do better. Heck, yesterday we were going through old family pictures and I was wearing Dior at 4 yrs (admittedly things like that contributed to my mother going into horrendous debt, but that's not the point). My godfather once brought me back a whole wardrobe from Paris. Back before I dressed myself, I was the cat's meow!

Anyway, the long and short is that my mother has been very vocally pointing out my lack, while I've been sub-vocally lamenting my lack.( Read more... )

In other news, I won't be around tomorrow night. For the first time in years we're going to Watchnight service. Usually we're traveling on New Year's Day, and so going to a service that doesn't let out until about 1 a.m. when you plan to be on the road at 5 or 6 a.m. really doesn't work out too well. So, no me tomorrow night. I may or may not be on during the day.

I also finished my first scarf....only to realize that I had no idea how to cast off. Gram and I thought that was a hoot. I've found a page on how to cast off, so I should be straight. Hopefully :D

So in unrelated news: fics that ppl wrote for me for

yuletide have been getting recced...and I admit it's almost like the recs are for me. lol. Is that wrong? But I get as excited that something that was written for me has been recced as I would if it was my stuff being recced. Almost as if it was something for a friend being recced. I dunno. I've been enjoying my first yuletide thus far.

In other news, I have started my Yuletide. Not including the title, it's 8 words long. Deadline for upload is next Sat, 9pm EST.

Shnarf.

lieueitak convinced me to join her in our own December NaNoWriMo. A real NaNo in which she is expect 50k words out of me. Wretched woman :p

So it's day one...and I'm already fail! I forgot to bring the notebook to transcribe the novel (Katya's letting me use my continued need to transcribe as part of my word count) and I just decided to fart off on working on Yuletide instead. And I hardly ever get any work done on Mondays b/c they're so busy. Oy. *hangs head*

Anywho, so if you see me online less than usual you know why: I'm doing actual work. Eek.

( Dear Yuletide Writer who got me )

I am incredibly, ridiculously, behind in my modified NaNo. So what am I doing? Signing up for Yuletide. It was either that or work on the ~~Tin Man bunny that hopped into my head last night on the way to rehearsal~~ novel.