blub.

I have been totally over-socialized since we got back to computer-land - stellar_dust is still home - she is staying for the SHA conference, so we are doing ALL THE THINGS while we have her. (and she has been too shy to contact any of the other dreamwidthers who are going to be there, so if you see this, SHA people, you should totally go find her and say hi) This means that in the past week there has been one all-day visit with cousins, one 24-hour New Years party, one trip to see Anglo-Saxon gold, one yuletide meetup (which she punked out on), and one Sherlock BBC watching party, plus old family friends over all day today, and (hopefully! although I'm kind of assuming there will be a natural disaster or something, given recent attempts) a fannish stitch'n'bitch in Baltimore this weekend.

I plan to spend the rest of January sitting at home working on a quilt and playing with computers, no fear.

Anyway, yuletide reveal: I didn't go to much effort to keep it secret, but I wrote

A Lesson in Natural History (4529 words) by melannen
Fandom: A Night in the Lonesome October - Roger Zelazny, Dream Cycle - H. P. Lovecraft
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jack/Jill, Graymalk&Snuff
Characters: Jill, Snuff, Graymalk, Growler, High Purring One, Gl'bgolyb, Iranon
Summary:

or, Through the Catflap of the Silver Key: in which Graymalk, the Witch's Cat, travels the Dreamlands, and meets a Tomcat, a Watchdog, an Old Wolf, and a Great Many Squirrels; there are two Carcases of Rats (both dead of replete old age), some Riddling, and much Nappery; and an Original Wormius Edition of the Book of Dead Names is most profanely Misused.

...which is an A Night in the Lonesome October fic that really pulls out a lot of the things related to Lovecraft's Dreamlands that were in the book, per lispeth's request and my inclination. (I am afraid though that the Purring One and Growler may have drawn at least as much from the Old Tom and Ponch, because I read ANitLO long before I read any Dreamlands and I already had their characters set in my mind...) It also throws in some random bits of Homestuck mostly because I madly wish that Homestuck fandom would do more with the Lovecraftian elements (does the average Homestuck fan even know who Lovecraft is?)

And then the other one:

Not Made For Any Man: (the moon's last quarter) (17001 words) by melannen
Fandom: Blossom Culp Series - Richard Peck, A Night in the Lonesome October - Roger Zelazny, Indiana Jones Series, Princess and the Frog (2009), Mary Russell - Laurie R. King, Tarzan - Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Blossom Culp, Alexander Armsworth, Graymalk, Snuff, Marion Ravenwood, Original Snake Character, Prince Naveen, Manu the Monkey, Lady Jane Clayton, A Hive of Bees, Jill, Mary Russell, Tiana, Irene Adler
Summary:

Alexander Armsworth is home from college. Blossom Culp hasn't changed nearly as much as he might have hoped she had. A lot of strange visitors are in town, and a lot of strange mutterings. There will be a full moon this Halloween, and a small cat named Graymalk just said "Hello" to Alexander in the middle of the street.

When lispeth requested Blossom Culp, and also requested a Night in the Lonesome October story that told a different game with crossover characters from any fandom I wanted, I knew ... well, I knew I was getting exactly what I deserved, since I basically requested that last year. So I decided to try. I thought I would be able to write about 500 words for every day in October, and finish a short-ish sequel in the same format as the original in about 15,000 words. 17,000 words later, I was exactly 1/4 of the way through.

So I went ahead and put up what I had (it does come to a sort of an ending place, even if very little has been resolved yet) and I am going to try to push on to day 31 by next Yuletide. I have it all outlined, and the structure I borrowed from Zelazny's book actually made it very easy to write - I have it all set up in Scrivener so ANitLO is divided up, one chapter per day, and then I read his chapter to get in voice and get some idea of what I should be working on and where in the story I should be, and then go write the TNMFM chapter for the same day. So HOPING I will be able to finish it, although according to the outline there's some pretty difficult stuff coming up in the moon's first quarter.

And then, what I would really love, is for someone to offer to co-mod a Night in the Lonesome October journal RPG over the month of October, where all the players pick an appropriate crossover or original character, a place and year, and we play it out in real-time. But that's for the future!

Meanwhile, I had to read up on so much canon for this (eight different fandoms, I think, plus the one I haven't brought in to the story yet. Plus Captain America which I watched in between) that I really wanted to talk about but couldn't because YULETIDE, so I will have to work on some of that backlog later.

[I just answered all my comments on the yuletide stories (I think) and somebody left one where they complimented me on my "command of various cannons" and I wanted to reply, "Yes, I enjoy using them to shoot down ships" but decided that was not the appropriate tone, so you get it posted here instead. :P]