I am back from my annual Winter Holiday away-from-internets-ness! I have not even started catching up on the DW posts I have missed, or the hundreds and hundreds of Yuletide recs, but I *did* get to my stories.

And as seems to be a trend, I have an embarrassment of riches again this year: three stories!

My assigned story is The End of the Enlightenment, based on A Night in the Lonesome October, and Awesome Author took up the challenge of writing about a Game other than the one in the book, and it is amazing! Alas, I am not knowledgeable enough about the place & time that author chose to recognize the characters immediately, but that is okay, because not really knowing just makes it creepier, plus! That means there is research to be done! Which is always a good thing!

I also got The Story of Elihu Yale, which fleshes out John Hodgman's account of the founding of Yale University, featuring Elihu Yale and his wise prostitute, and it is adorable!

And finally, there is Two Out of Three Ain't Bad, which is Myssmo/Law and Srafen/Hedgyt and comes in chapters, OMG. Author took up the challenge of writing queer lamnviin! And in a way that fills me with joy!

...also, while all the above stories are amazing on their own, two of the authors left notes to the effect that they plan to write more, which a) means more story for me someday YAY! and b) makes me feel slightly better about the fact that I did the same thing to my yuletide recipient. :/ Dear recipient: You seemed to like the story, and I hope you could not tell that I only wrote 1/4 of what I intended (and instead just assumed I'm not a very good writer) but I *do* still intend to write you the other 3/4. Hopefully by the time the archive opens again. Maybe?

Meanwhile, apropos of you-really-don't-want-to-know, here is a song I have written:
( I want a Necronomicon for Solstice (only a Necronomicon will do.) )

Hi yuletide writer person! And whoever else is nosing around!

I am not a scary person to write for. Seriously. Write me a story in one of the fandoms I asked for, and write it with love, or at least sympathy, for the characters and the fandom and the art of story, and I will be over the moon regardless.

I know a lot of people mention things they don't want, in their letters, but the only things I consistently don't want are things nobody does on purpose anyway, so I don't see much point in mentioning them. But if you are worried that you might write something I don't want accidentally - in my opinion, yuletide is about having fun, and about stretching yourself by writing in new fandoms: I don't expect my present to be a 10,000 word epic that involves all my kinks, fixes everything wrong with the fandom, ends injustice in the world, cures HIV and brings world peace. I mean, I would not be upset if you did manage that, but in general, if you feel uncomfortable writing something in one of my prompts, or worried that you're screwing it up? Don't worry about it. Write me something that makes you happy and it will make me happy too.

Also, you can cheat: earlier this year, I posted a list of 101 of my bulletproof narrative kinks. If you include at least one of those in your story, use proper dialogue punctuation, and double-space between paragraphs, then seriously, you can do no wrong.

Some general notes: I love crossovers, and I don't care if I know all the fandoms. If you get struck with a crossover idea, please, write it! (If you don't that is also okay.) And if you get stuck on the matched fandom, please look at the other fandoms I requested, you never know, you might fall in love - and I won't mind if you don't know all the details of canon. My DW is almost entirely unlocked, and feel free to rummage around among the tags and old posts if you feel like stalking me more.

Also, if for some reason you need to know more, stellar_dust is my sister, she groks yuletide, and I am hereby volunteering her as a go-between, explainer of things, and general dogsbody for you. :D

On the other hand, if you don't feel like stalking me more - if this letter is already too long for you (it is, objectively, already too long!) - feel free to ignore it. Everything you actually need to know is in the official request. And if you're somebody I already know - as I suspect you might be, for several of these fandoms - good luck, and cheers. :D

Under the cuts I am reposting my requests, adding short intros and resources on the fandoms I requested, and then going into more detail on ideas for stories (which is one thing I am never short of.) I am going to natter on at length, because OMG, a chance to natter on about my small fandoms and maybe even have an audience!

( Compendium of World Knowledge - John Hodgman )

( Miss Madelyn Mack Detective - Hugh Cosgro Weir )

(  Their Majesties' Bucketeers - L. Neil Smith )

(  A Night in the Lonesome October - Roger Zelazny )

...although to be honest I would have seriously considered going just so I could jump for Adam and Jamie. :D

Some notes from the Rally, mostly covering things that wouldn't have shown up on the TV coverage:

( Some random notes on the Rally )

Anyway: Jon and Stephen live are adorbs. I hope Mitchell and Brooker are that adorable when they get their live show. And are forced to sing just as much.

( 12 photos, mostly crowd shots )

I was reading rm's PSA on Queer and it occured to me that one could, in fact, make a simple nine-patch quilted totebag, with eight symbols around and the rainbow flag in the middle.

G would probably be a pink triangle, either patchwork or applique.
A would probably be the AVEN triangle, though one could use the new flag.
B would be the pink-lavender-blue flag or triangle.
T would probably be either the three-pronged symbol (applique) or the pink-white-blue flag.
L would probably be either the linked symbols or a labrys; this would have to be applique.
for I I don't know; I don't know of any pride symbols for this specifically (please tell me if there is one!) but one could use the three-pronged symbol here and the flag for T
U would probably just be a question mark
Q again I don't know; if one uses the rainbow as the center square, what goes here? There is the queer anarchy flag, but that has a specific political meaning; I'm almost tempted to go with the leather flag, as that takes in some of the queer communities that often are sidelined in GLBT and also would be fun to patchwork, but it also excludes a lot of queerness. An applique lambda might work, though (or maybe a rainbow here and lambda in the center? Or rainbow flag for Q, and the center square embroidered QUILTBAG?)

For the liner/backing, I am regretting the fact that I always throw out the incredibly ugly prints with vomit-green cabbage roses that seem to inexplicably recur. :P

And you could do one side of the bag nine-patch, and the other side as one large square for some specific identity/community that's yours and isn't specifically in the acronym: two-spirit, blue-feather, a subset of trans*, bear, poly, faerie, pansexual, bdsm, pflag, a traditional log cabin or stone wall patchwork pattern, or some combination or personal symbol that IDs the bag's owner specifically...

Anybody have any better ideas for the symbols to use for QUILTBAG, or objections to the ones I used? Anybody else interested in making or owning one of these? :D


(...we are not even going to talk about the dozen crafting/mending projects already in progress, no. Anyway two of those involve patchwork already, and if I have to pull out all the quilting stuff I might as well start a new project too, right?)


And speaking of activism and symbols, I am totally going to the Rally to Restore Sanity. (Did anybody doubt this for a second? :D) I will be bringing a sign which displays the H in Sunrays, of course. Though I am debating coming up with one with an actual political message or international fake news reference as well. Who else is going? Does anybody want to get together a whole group with h-in-sunrays signs?

4. staranise gave me that "explain five icons" meme. Here are the five icons she chose ( These may contain major spoilers for some of the small fandoms my icons are from. )

If anybody want me to pick five icons for them, I suppose I could. :D

(look at me showing off my l33t new css skills, too!)

This is dancesontrains's fault: she said "crossover", "Charlie Brooker" and "Keith Olbermann" in the same comment.

I am never, ever going to write story that follows, because it is epic in both length and scope and I am not good enough at voice to pull off even half the characters in it, since it has in it pretty much anyone in either Pundit or BBC RPS fandoms. But since I appear to have accidentally written an outline of it anyway, I share! :D

( ...by this point, the ongoing Keith/Charlie transatlantic pigtail-pulling contest had become a running joke... )

..and while I am on the topic of obscure RPS crossovers that maybe two people in existence actually know all the fandoms for, here is the other BBC/America RPS epic crossover that I shall never, never actually write.

( I call it the Top Gear Pledge Week Special. It has Andy Wilman/Doug 'the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion, 'Bongo Boy'' Berman slash in it. Among other bits of horrifyingness that haunt my dreams. )

Okay, I said I'd link to John Hodgman on QI, so here's John Hodgman on QI. It was deeply disappointing, though, alas. He didn't get to do much - they stuck him in as the fifth wheel without even a buzzer, and he spent most of the show getting talked over. I guess it kind of makes sense that he wouldn't work on the show - the over-socialized, over-educated, Northeastern child of the ivy league that Hodgman plays is essentially the same character as Stephen Fry's, only without the inbred superiority complex, shared cultural references and almost complete lack of an offensiveness filter that lets Fry do what Fry does, so Hodgman was just sort of pallid and unnecessary. The people they've had on to be American before have gone for the loud and obnoxious sort of American, which is probably what you'd need to be heard over the overwhelming Britishness, but is so not Hodgman (and so not the only way to be American.) I totally 'ship Fry/Hodgman now though.

(It also explains why I'm having so much trouble fitting John Oliver into the BBC RPS world - the character he plays is essentially the counterpart of Rich Hall's, and at this point would probably read as British to a British person about as much as Hall's reads as American to me - that is, yes, sure, but somehow slightly off-tone.)

***

Anyway! Meantime, I have caught my AO3 account up to all the fics that are listed in my LJ memories, which takes me to the end of 2006 and exactly 30 stories. I added 18 fics in 15 different fandoms - though as almost half of those were crossovers, it's not quite as scattered as it sounds. (I still don't qualify for remix in anything other than HP, though.) Now I have to find the ones I've scattered around over the past two years as I've moved around, and any others that got lost in the mix - probably half a dozen or so - and, um, finish some of the ones I'm 90% done with from the last ten years :P.

Here are four stories from the 2005-2006 period that I still like and wish had gotten more readers:
( BTVS/It's A Wonderful Life, SG1, SGA, and Heinlein novels. )

...and happy new year! Well, the new year was actually Sunday, but I am not good at updating when I plan to, hah. As has become traditional, Commander Valentine (the woman in my icon) has decided to give up smoking as a New Year's resolution, and thus will be sucking on a candy cane instead until she inevitably backslides in about a month. :P (If there's any place where the Christian liturgical calendar would be the official state calendar, it's Commander Valentine's home planet, Stephen Colbert's Alphalon.)

Anyway. While stellar_dust was in Maryland for the holiday weekend, she gave me a SIGNED PAPERBACK COPY of JOHN HODGMAN'S first BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE, THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE. It is inscribed personally to me, and he has drawn the dreaded H in sunrays - the sign for the hoboes to rise up and overthrow the American government - over the "Stephen Colbert Award for the Literary Excellence" badge on the cover.

The paperback edition also has - and I had forgotten, if I ever knew this - the original cover hidden on the inside, the one that contains a DRAGON, a SWORDMAID in a metal bikini, and a flattering portrait of the Author in one of the TRIPLE SUNS. So of course I had to make icons. :D

( 13 shareable Areas of My Expertise icons & descriptions )

ALSO HERE IS MY VERY OWN HOBO SIGN ON the Stephen Colbert Literary Excellence Award medal:

It is not for sharing, it is mine.

(Not that I will be in the least disappointed at anything I get for yuletide, but why did I forget to nominate Hodgmanverse?? --if I get any bookstore gift certificates for holidays I am buying myself "More Information Than You Need" at long last, and then there will probably be quite a few mole-men, furry lobsters, eagles of Hohoq and hoboes appearing in this space.)


PS: John Hodgman is on Quite Interesting this week! I will be posting a link here as soon as it is up on youtube.

Part two of copying my sister's post: photo update.

I haven't taken many for awhile, because my camera is only partly working. And the bits that seem to be really going bad (as opposed to just needing to be smacked around a bit to behave) are the lighting adjustment and the flash, so a lot of these needed a fair amound of futzing after I got them on the computer, and are still slightly pink, but they came out suprisingly okay for all that.

Also, I decided to play with Flickr as my host: I've had an account for years, because it's the default on LT, and doing it through my webspace has gotten substantially more annoying since they made it impossible to see directory indexes on the web. So you can see all these pictures at my flickr account, with slightly different descriptions and more image sizes.

( Colonial Williamsburg, cute puppies and kitties, and Native American sites in Ohio. )

The reason I decided I want to go see the mounds again was that I was going to continue my yuletide story by having Jane and Lambert (of the College of Magics books) autocamping down the National Road and visiting moundbuilder/Fort Ancient religious sites along the way, learning about how Native Americans did their own sort of magic within North, South, East, and West. But as usual I got distracted by the fun of doing the historical research and only got the first bit of the story written. I bought a book at Hopewell Culture National Park, though, Mysteries of the Hopewell: Astronomers, Geometers, and Magicians, which should be excellently helpful if I ever *do* write the story about European magic meets the Moundbuilders.