Yuletide Offerings 2011
Jan. 1st, 2012 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
measured_wordsSo! This year I have been rather busy, and I didn't get to write half the things I had ideas for Yuletide. I haven't *read* half the things I would like to either, though of course I have found a hundred zillion really lovely stories! Anyone who is interested (for those of you might read this who aren't already Yuletide-savy) should Check out the main archive for 2011 and also the stuff in Yuletide Madness, which is mostly shorter stories and still frequently of very high quality :) Maybe some year I will be organized enough to make some kind of coherent rec post, but this is not that year!
I wrote two things this year, with a total word count of about 18000 words - about 4000 words and several stories less than last year, but I am very happy with both!
The Shining Gates (13049 words) by
Measured_Words
Fandom: Changeling: the Dreaming
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Summary:
---
This was my assignment fic, for Kalirush (who as far as I can tell has no journal on LJ or dreamwidth). I was excited when I saw Changeling was nominated, and intrigued when I saw the original prompt. I also found that it was perfect that I got matched to it, because it seems like all I ever write these days is RPG based stories! I already had half an idea for something I might write before assignments went out, so I sort of ran with that and it took off and blossomed into a rather huge story! I hadn't set out to write something that large and involved, but that's how it went :3 I decided on a regency era fic because, well, my recip said she wasn't a huge fan of the Sidhe, and they weren't around in that period, and I'd been reading a lot of Georgette Heyer. The idea of a Satyr as a Regency Romance Rake was too perfect, and it sort of grew from there. Most of th characters I made up for the story, with the exception of Seek, who I will admit was an NPC from an Unseelie game I ran an age and a half ago. I fleshed him out a lot more for this, and actually got to use his sister as well, who’d been living in my head but not actually been used previously that I recall.
I had a lot of fun thinking about what it would be like to be a Changeling at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and to look around at some of the early technology, such as the Jacquard loom which was the first invention to ever use punch cards for programming. I also learned a little bit more about the Luddites, though they don't get too much mention in the story in the end. I really liked all the characters I came up with for the story, especially the Fitzgeralds (though their accents were a little terrifying, as was adapting Nocker swearing to the Regency period!). I actually have half an idea for a sort of spin on a Regency romance piece about a woman horse racer who comes to visit family in the north and encounters a certain disreputable local lord.... We'll see if I ever go anywhere with that or if the thought alone is enough to amuse me ;)
One other thing about the story is something I didn't actually really notice until I'd finished writing it, which is that it sort of tells the same story twice - at least I think there are some parallels to be drawn between "Caroline" and Imagnie, and certainly with how Seek deals with them. or maybe I'm just telling myself that because otherwise the story may look a little unstructured.... but I'll leave that to others to judge ^-^
A Document in Madness (4941 words) byMeasured_Words
Fandom: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Rating: Mature
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Laertes (Hamlet), Ophelia (Hamlet), Polonius, Gertrude (Hamlet), Claudius (Hamlet)
Summary:
---
This is the second story I wrote, because.... okay, so if I am being honest, I was sort of stalking the requester (who has unfailingly written at least one piece I am utterly in love with every year, including a drabble for me my first year), and fell in love with the prompt. because.... Hamlet! Plus Lovecraft! It was like it was made for me :D I pretty much immediately had Ideas for this. I subsequently downloaded the Kenneth Branagh movie version of the play (which okay was maybe a little more ridiculously over the top than I remembered!), which I made![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lukon_idein watch with me while I rummaged through her copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Luckily, every house seems to have one, since my Hamlet is apparently still in storage D:
I don’t remember when I settled on using Laertes as a PoV character. I think I didn’t want to write from hamlet because it would be too much to cover, but Laertes is conveniently gone for most of the play. The recip (gileonnen) asked for a story about family legacy a-la The Rats in the Walls, and if I wasn’t going to use Hamlet, Laertes seemed the natural second choice. I think I was also inspired by the bit in the play where it talks about Polonius being so close to the old king. It left me with a lot of interesting things to figure out, anyway – what all did he know, and how, and if he did know about his creepy heritage, why did he leave Ophelia there and take off for Paris. I wanted to preserve her innocence, and I figured that incest was already a strong theme in the play, and ran with that! The other character that was tricky for me to figure out was Gertrude – how much did she know, and how active a player was she. I decided to make her completely active and involve and possibly even in control of everything. Claudius was also a bit tricky – I decided he wasn’t in on things to begin with but was certainly willing to go along.
The other thing I wanted to do was write around the text, so that nothing that happened in the play as written needed to be changed – this is meant to be more something you can slip in between the cracks, giving new context to what’s already there. I was really pleased to get some comments saying that I’d managed to make Laertes Interesting or sympathetic to people who hadn’t given him much thought before. I was pretty happy with how it all turned out, anyway! ETA: Oh yes, the other things I wanted to say about this was that I wrote most of it longhand in a journal on my way to and from work/school, until after I;d finished my assignment, and I think that had some impact on the style of it.
There were a lot of really good other stories written for the prompt too, but I am going to mention Chiaroscuro byacrossthefloors in particular because not only is it beautifully written piece (from Ophelia’s PoV) but I think that it is compatible with my own to the extent that you could make them part of the same thing, and it would be extra deliciously creepily horrific.
I wrote two things this year, with a total word count of about 18000 words - about 4000 words and several stories less than last year, but I am very happy with both!
The Shining Gates (13049 words) by
Fandom: Changeling: the Dreaming
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Summary:
The world is a changing place in the early nineteenth-century. The world struggles against the encroaching banality of industry, but the Dreaming has its own dangers - quests and costs and legacies inherited from the Age of Wonder when the Sidhe withdrew from the world.
The Lord of Kelham Manor calls an outsider to help him find as stolen treasure, hoping to find a solution to a larger problem at an old freehold he has found and claimed.
---
This was my assignment fic, for Kalirush (who as far as I can tell has no journal on LJ or dreamwidth). I was excited when I saw Changeling was nominated, and intrigued when I saw the original prompt. I also found that it was perfect that I got matched to it, because it seems like all I ever write these days is RPG based stories! I already had half an idea for something I might write before assignments went out, so I sort of ran with that and it took off and blossomed into a rather huge story! I hadn't set out to write something that large and involved, but that's how it went :3 I decided on a regency era fic because, well, my recip said she wasn't a huge fan of the Sidhe, and they weren't around in that period, and I'd been reading a lot of Georgette Heyer. The idea of a Satyr as a Regency Romance Rake was too perfect, and it sort of grew from there. Most of th characters I made up for the story, with the exception of Seek, who I will admit was an NPC from an Unseelie game I ran an age and a half ago. I fleshed him out a lot more for this, and actually got to use his sister as well, who’d been living in my head but not actually been used previously that I recall.
I had a lot of fun thinking about what it would be like to be a Changeling at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and to look around at some of the early technology, such as the Jacquard loom which was the first invention to ever use punch cards for programming. I also learned a little bit more about the Luddites, though they don't get too much mention in the story in the end. I really liked all the characters I came up with for the story, especially the Fitzgeralds (though their accents were a little terrifying, as was adapting Nocker swearing to the Regency period!). I actually have half an idea for a sort of spin on a Regency romance piece about a woman horse racer who comes to visit family in the north and encounters a certain disreputable local lord.... We'll see if I ever go anywhere with that or if the thought alone is enough to amuse me ;)
One other thing about the story is something I didn't actually really notice until I'd finished writing it, which is that it sort of tells the same story twice - at least I think there are some parallels to be drawn between "Caroline" and Imagnie, and certainly with how Seek deals with them. or maybe I'm just telling myself that because otherwise the story may look a little unstructured.... but I'll leave that to others to judge ^-^
A Document in Madness (4941 words) by
Fandom: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Rating: Mature
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Laertes (Hamlet), Ophelia (Hamlet), Polonius, Gertrude (Hamlet), Claudius (Hamlet)
Summary:
Laertes knows what is rotten in the sate of Denmark. He'd really rather not return, but finds himself summoned home on the the death of the king.
---
This is the second story I wrote, because.... okay, so if I am being honest, I was sort of stalking the requester (who has unfailingly written at least one piece I am utterly in love with every year, including a drabble for me my first year), and fell in love with the prompt. because.... Hamlet! Plus Lovecraft! It was like it was made for me :D I pretty much immediately had Ideas for this. I subsequently downloaded the Kenneth Branagh movie version of the play (which okay was maybe a little more ridiculously over the top than I remembered!), which I made
lukon_idein watch with me while I rummaged through her copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Luckily, every house seems to have one, since my Hamlet is apparently still in storage D:I don’t remember when I settled on using Laertes as a PoV character. I think I didn’t want to write from hamlet because it would be too much to cover, but Laertes is conveniently gone for most of the play. The recip (
gileonnen) asked for a story about family legacy a-la The Rats in the Walls, and if I wasn’t going to use Hamlet, Laertes seemed the natural second choice. I think I was also inspired by the bit in the play where it talks about Polonius being so close to the old king. It left me with a lot of interesting things to figure out, anyway – what all did he know, and how, and if he did know about his creepy heritage, why did he leave Ophelia there and take off for Paris. I wanted to preserve her innocence, and I figured that incest was already a strong theme in the play, and ran with that! The other character that was tricky for me to figure out was Gertrude – how much did she know, and how active a player was she. I decided to make her completely active and involve and possibly even in control of everything. Claudius was also a bit tricky – I decided he wasn’t in on things to begin with but was certainly willing to go along.The other thing I wanted to do was write around the text, so that nothing that happened in the play as written needed to be changed – this is meant to be more something you can slip in between the cracks, giving new context to what’s already there. I was really pleased to get some comments saying that I’d managed to make Laertes Interesting or sympathetic to people who hadn’t given him much thought before. I was pretty happy with how it all turned out, anyway! ETA: Oh yes, the other things I wanted to say about this was that I wrote most of it longhand in a journal on my way to and from work/school, until after I;d finished my assignment, and I think that had some impact on the style of it.
There were a lot of really good other stories written for the prompt too, but I am going to mention Chiaroscuro by
acrossthefloors in particular because not only is it beautifully written piece (from Ophelia’s PoV) but I think that it is compatible with my own to the extent that you could make them part of the same thing, and it would be extra deliciously creepily horrific.
