HELLO DREAMWIDTH

[melannen]

I am back in Maryland!

...I have been back for several weeks, as those of you I have seen in comment threads have probably noticed. Just. Have not updated.

(I have been watching all the people who came back with new enthusiasm for journaling, and going 'well, at least I was also this patchy about journaling back before tumblr existed'.)

(I have posted some stuff to tumblr but really you aren't missing much except chat injokes and wrangling stuff.)

Anyway, I came home and promptly volunteered to cover for our church organist who is on vacation for three weeks, because the alternative was NO MUSIC AT ALL (our church is tiny okay.) So I've been desperately trying to remember how to play piano ever since then. I haven't quite gotten brave enough to play with both hands at once yet, but at least I've mostly remembered how to read the bottom clef? Luckily I learned last Sunday that once the congregation starts singing nobody can hear the piano anyway, so nobody can tell when I totally lose the thread.

....hopefully this three weeks of abject terror will end in me actually continuing to work on piano with some regularity, that was the idea when I volunteered. I would love to be able to improvise chords like my father could, but that's a long way off. In the meantime, I am constantly going "can't get on computer, should practice piano". This doesn't actually keep me off the computer, but it does keep me from starting anything productive on the computer.

Anyway onto important stuff, by which I mean .

Being able to request more fandoms this year is totally screwing with everyone's plans! My nomination plans keep changing.

Things I am definitely nominating and requesting:
1. Alan Dean Foster - Humanx Commonwealth (Bra Tse-Mallory, Truzenzuzex, other two slots open, may go with either Flinx and Pip or Syl and that one Ulru-Ujurrian, depending on how perverse I am feeling.)
2. 2D Goggles / Lovelace and Babbage (Lovelace, Babbage, Brunel, currently thinking Summerville for #4 but could be convinced otherwise.)

Things I have mentioned maybe nominating and/or requesting:
1. Arm Joe - I know other people are nominating, not sure which characters, though.
2. Lucky Starr (Conway/Henree, because I live in PERPETUAL HOPE)
3. Something by Daniel Pinkwater (because there should always be something by daniel pinkwater nominating, and I haven't seen anyone else talking about it yet.)
4. Madelyn Mack (I won't offer/request this because I've both gotten and written it at this point, but *someone* should nominate it, obvs.)
5. Diane Duane - Rihannsu Series (I know this has been nominated already, but I offered character slots to various people, I need to figure out if they're needed.)

6. Othniel Marsh/Edward Drinker Cope Hateship (because c'mon how is there not fic for this already???) Not sure what to call the fandom, though - could nom under either arts/sciences or 19th century, or even American Frontier maybe, or could go with either VICTORIAN SCIENCE RPF or PALEONTOLOGY RPF if I wanted to coin something, because both of those would be awesome fandoms to have, and I'd have 0 trouble filling in my other two character slots for either.
7. 19th Century France RPF (already nominated, offered character slots here too, not sure if still needed. Could probably drop my intended-request characters from here into VICTORIAN SCIENCE if I went with that, though.)
8. Golden Age Science Fiction Fandom RPF (honestly don't have any particular characters in mind for this? I want it to be a thing, though.) (alternatively I could nom one of the 'history' 'zines from this period that's available online; I don't knw if that would increase or decrease my chances of offers.)
9. Cryptozoology (would be unable to decide whether to nom this as RPF or not. Also unable to decide whether to nominate cryptids or cryptozoologists as characters.)

Obviously solution: poll which I will then procede to ignore! :D

Poll #14234

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 27

View Respondents

What should I nominate for yuletide?

View Answers

Arm Joe
0 (0.0%)

Lucky Starr
1 (3.7%)

Daniel Pinkwater
7 (25.9%)

Madelyn Mack
2 (7.4%)

Rihannsu
6 (22.2%)

Marsh/Cope in an existing RPF category
4 (14.8%)

Marsh/Cope and coin a category
5 (18.5%)

19th Century France RPF
3 (11.1%)

Science Fiction Fandom RPF
5 (18.5%)

A particular SF Fandom source text
5 (18.5%)

Cryptozoology (Cryptids)
5 (18.5%)

Cryptozoology (People)
0 (0.0%)

Cryptozoology (Mixed)
3 (11.1%)

Comments

[hannah]

The world desperately needs more of the Snarkout Boys.

[melannen]

True, but it also desperately needs more Alan Mendelsohn and more Dada Ducks and more lizard music and more yobgorgle and.... I wish I could nominate Pinkwaterverse as a whole, but over years I've yet to get a straight answer on whether that would work, and how.

[hannah]

I think if you have to ask, you're doing it wrong. Pinkwater simply glides along.

[melannen]

True! I just don't want to overreach and have no Pinkwater at all as a result, and there's no really good collective name for "Stories Set Around The Shores of Lake Mishagoo"....

[hannah]

I'm sure there's a good neologism or clever phrase out there.

[jain]

Lucky Starr's already been nominated, with Lucky, Bigman, Conway, and Henree as the characters. Assuming the nominator doesn't change her mind, you're covered there. :-)

[melannen]

Ah, yay! (I don't see them on the spreadsheet yet - am I missing something or is this private information? :)

[jain]

They're there; I'm not sure why you aren't seeing it. The fandom's currently on line 243 of the spreadsheet, and Conway and Henree are in columns D and E.

[melannen]

...Apparently my computer is refusing to act nicely around Google spreadsheets again. Alas. Well, thanks for letting me know!

[the_rck]

I'm not sure I could write a Pinkwater story, but I'd at least consider offering a Pinkwater fandom.

[melannen]

...which fandom would you be most likely to offer? I can't decide between half a dozen books.

[the_rck]

I've recently read The Neddiad and its sequels. I remember Lizard Music and the two Snarkout Boys books fondly. I've read and own a few others that I'm not remembering off the top of my head.

My main hesitation about offering a Pinkwater fandom is that I'm not at all sure I could get the rhythm and general insanity right. I mean, everything follows logically, one step after another, but when you step back and think, it all adds up to something strange and wonderful.

[majoline]

*waves hello* How did I not know that Madelyn Mack was already a thing? Must read.

I'd pay good money to see the Othniel Marsh/Edward Drinker Cope Hateship. That would be AMAZING. *u*

I want Golden Age Science Fiction Fandom RPF but am struggling to figure out who I'd pair up. Gen could be nice? But it would have to be interconnected with all sorts of people hanging out, not just SCIENCE! in labs.

[melannen]

Yeah, I would probably ask for gen, for that. Don't know what, though, unless it's, like, modern AU where they all have tumblrs as teenagers instead of having to make do with the mail. :P

[majoline]

Ooh, I could see that! Modern tumblr AU sounds like it would be a lot of fun.

[edit] Actually, Modern Internet AU complete with flames and drama, now that I thought about it. ;)

[melannen]

Yes! Although at that point it's not really RP Fiction anymore, because from what I can tell, fandom flamewars in the '30s were pretty much indistinguishable from modern ones.

[majoline]

True... hmmm, would sticking them on tumblr be removed enough? Huh. This is hard.

My original thought was to have them actually *be* scientists in the ~future~. Or, because I just cracked myself up thinking about it, High School AU.

[melannen]

Any given SFF AU would probably be cool, actually. High fantasy! Superheroes! Space opera! ...Ruling the world in a retro-future utopia where all their most imaginative dreams came true!

...magically transported forward in time from the first Worldcon to the 2014 SDCC!

[majoline]

...magically transported forward in time from the first Worldcon to the 2014 SDCC! Now, we're just making sure I keep laughing, right? ;)

Oh, yeah, that Space Opera AU would have to be super-meta. Like Galaxy Quest but with genre-savvy writers who knew what they were getting into!

[seekingferret]

If you want Golden Age SFF RPF, you might as well ask for Black Widowers fic?

[melannen]

I was thinking more 1930s than 1970s (and more fans than pros) but Black Widowers fic would also be awesome! (alas if only I had been able to get my hands on any of the actual Black Widowers books.)

...I suppose I could ask for Supergranny fic featuring the Mayhem Mystery Writers secret meetings, but it wouldn't be the same (also nobody would know what I was talking about.)

[seekingferret]

The only one I own is the Ardai-edited best of collection from last decade (which includes Ardai's own Black Widowers fanfic), but I think I've read all of them.

[zlabya]

I didn't vote for this but something in me is jumping up and down saying 'Theodore Sturgeon!!!" He seems like such an awesome combination of sweet-everyone-loved-him and off-the-wallness. Don't know if he was active in the 30s; he might have still been a teen trying to become a circus star then.

Also, SF First Women of Fandom (both wives and writers--imagine the stories!

[melannen]

There's at least a couple really interesting wanks chronicled in the old fandom history 'zines, in the mid- '30s, where women were writing to the MLs under gender-neutral pseuds, and then they came out as women, and nobody believed them and thought they were just sockpuppeting for attention. :D Oldfandom is amazing. (there's also at least one case where a person who was active on the early mailing lists turned out to be a pseud for somebody's cat....)

[beatrice_otter]

I swapped out Naraht for my character noms for Rihannsu fandom, and I nominated it as Star Trek: Rihannsu - Diane Duane

Characters
Ael
Arrhae
H'Daen
Aidoann

[melannen]

That is an excellent nominations list! Are there any other characters that badly needed to be nominated, or can I leave it in your hands?

[beatrice_otter]

Well, there's no other characters that I need for my own requests. So how badly other characters need to be nominated depends on what other people would like to request.

[carmarthen]

COPE AND MARSH. I wonder if Trojie would offer...

[melannen]

COPE AND MARSH.

I suspect there would be at least a couple offers, because COPE AND MARSH, especially if I put it in its own fandom so people didn't have to dig at the historic RPF buckets to find it.

[fenellaevangela]

I wasn't sure who to nominate for cryptozoology either! I did leave my fourth nom unfilled, though, so if you had any character suggestions . . . ? I was thinking a mixed group, but maybe nominating cryptids would allow for broader fic possibilities and more people would be interested in writing for it?

[melannen]

Oooh, you nominated already! \o/ I suspect having, like, Bigfoot/Sasquatch or Nessie/Champ as options would greatly increase the chance of offers, yeah, outside the circle of "hardcore cryptozoology geeks who are also comfortable with rpf". But if what you really want is RPF, go for it! (I have no strong feelings on this one, except the strong feeling that it should be a yuletide fandom at last.)

[fenellaevangela]

Ideally I would really like a mixed group, but with only four character nominations I am leaning towards RPF. Mostly because I can't choose, ha.

My list so far is Tom Slick, Jimmy Stewart (because I want stories about them being cryptozoology buddies), Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans.

. . . I'm also tempted to slip Newt Scamander in there, but that's cheating, I know ;-) I'll have to add him in the optional details!

[melannen]

I got an "augh, probably" when I floated to the mods the possibility that Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find them could be a yuletide fandom this year. :D

[fenellaevangela]

Ha! Well, I'll have to keep a lookout for that because it could be a sight to see. I haven't noticed any talk about it; do you know if anyone's tried to nominate it?