while the internet at large prepares itself for halloween - which is not really a big deal in australia, honestly - i find myself thinking of the silly season: yuletide! being as i am jewish, christmas is of no consequence to me, but yuletide gives me something to look forward to at the year's end, a way to get the same zest of life that other people seem to have for the last week of december. it snuck up on me this year: nominations were open before i knew what i wanted to nominate. but after some deliberations, i settled on my usual set for the secret history, the brideshead revisited trio - these two, the same as last year - and the southern reach trilogy. (
here is my comment on the coordination post; i have one slot open for brideshead.)
for southern reach, one of my characters is whitby, who doesn't have a single tagging on ao3 yet! i have a lot of prompts in mind for southern reach, so i'm hoping i can catch someone else out there who read these books full of so many incredible, dynamic characters, and saw the weird scientist and went "this one is mine." for the other two fandoms, which i've both requested and written before, i will probably end up with more broad requests. though for the sake of people out there who prefer some sort of prompting, i'm sure i'll come up with something!
this will be my fourth yuletide. i'm looking forward to seeing what else i want to request from the tagset, and hopefully to writing some treats this year. (i always say i will, and yet, and yet.) in general i think i'm just going to take it easy and focus on writing and treating this year. last year's yuletide was a weird one for me. on the one hand, i wrote probably
one of the best fics i've ever written - i just reread it, and honestly it holds up - but on the other hand, my recipient neither commented nor kudosed, despite the fact that i was working directly from one of their prompts. this put me in a very weird headspace and i spent a lot of time sitting on my hands and wishing for people to rec my fic, namesearching on coal and stuff like that... which wasn't good for me at all! but i was also in a super weird headspace, like, life-wise as well, because i had (a) just finished writing my phd thesis (b) undiagnosed depression. idk. obviously i wish my fic had been a bit more of a hit, but i know it's niche content, so i'm mostly over it.
the other thing last year, is there was some weirdness with my gift. i won't go into the full details but basically i shook my gift, and i found that my gift was tagged with one of my DNWs, sort of. it was partly my fault - i had worded the DNW too vaguely - but i spoke with the mods, and they interpreted the DNW how i had intended it, agreed that the gifter had disregarded the DNW, and got me a pinch hit. and, like,
the pinch hit was delightful and everything i could've hoped for, so i was lucky in the end. plus i got
a treat fic, for the first time ever! but i couldn't stop thinking about my original gift, which had disappeared from the collection (duh, of course i checked) - was it a genuine misunderstanding? was i just being a bitch? or had someone honest to god written me a spitefic gift and i dodged a bullet?
yuletide is one of those things where you can't really please everyone. (though, i will say, lurking coal taught me one thing, which is that i'll write my "dear yuletide writer" letter in sentence case this year, i promise.) i have largely been very lucky with it! i still think very fondly of
my gift from two years ago, which i have read so, so many times, as essentially one of the best fics ever. but i definitely had a moment, leading up to nominations, where i thought about last year and found myself wondering if i should do it at all this year. as you can see, i made it past that! i have made my nominations. i am getting my ducks lined up, thinking about which fandoms in the spreadsheet catch my eye. and i am going to make this yuletide a positive experience, because if for some unforseen reason i don't have time for it next year, i don't want to have ended on a sour note.
that said. i'm moving overseas probably around december, so this might be another frantic one. better start writing as soon as i get my assignment this year! and it may just be that i do most of my reading through the collection in january/february, if things get too crazy. either way - i'm glad i wrote all this out, because i've talked myself back into being excited again!! it's yuletime baby!
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