My own Yuletide writer has posted about writing for me, so thought I might yap about my own Yuletide experience.
Some general thoughts: I'm not super-involved in fandom anymore, but Yuletide is one I can't stay away from. This was my ninth year doing it. Most years I've been lucky enough to get fandoms that I've written snippets for before - the difficult part for me is always the 1000+ word aspect of it, because my tendency is to write 500-word fics.
This was the first year I'd written DS9 for Yuletide, although I received a nifty DS9 last year. I didn't request it this year, because I didn't have anything specific I wanted, and I've read a lot of DS9 fic, but it was an amazing year for DS9 fic and there were many, many extraordinary fics for this show that finished over a decade ago.
I really must be more specific with my prompts, even though ultimately it boils down to 'seriously, have fun with it and I'm sure I'll love it'. This is a policy that's served me well, but I know my writer would've liked a little more guidance, and also when I was looking for Madness-y things I really liked having specific ideas (combined with 'or anything really'). (I did get put off by epic 'here's what not to do' lists, particularly when the default assumption seemed to be that the writer was a homophobic sexist racist pig. True for much of the internet, maybe, but the corner of fandom that does Yuletide tends to be pretty aware and reflective.)
So. I wrote Immortal, a gen DS9 fic for![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2)
bebunny, who wrote: ...since I've not really gone looking or read much ST fic at all, let alone DS9, I'm happy to be surprised. I have a deep abiding love of Jadzia Dax though, especially when it comes to her history.
My DS9 pairing of choice is Bashir/O'Brien, but I have a healthy worship of most of the characters, including Jadzia. I'd written Jadzia/pre-joining-Ezri before, as well as Ezri-has-previous-hosts-angst, and the whole Trill thing fascinates me. Joining is such a big deal, and it's this huge honour but also an incredible responsibility. You're joined and you know that the symbiont becomes the priority - and at the same time, that's a good thing, because it has your memories, there's a part of you that goes on.
So with Jadzia Dax's history, there were two ways of approaching it - Dax, the symbiont, or Jadzia, the host. I went with the host - the snippets of this girl that we see in Invasive Procedures, the girl described as shy and quiet before joining (yet still clearly having something that made her get through initiation).
I rewatched the classic Trill episodes - 'Dax', 'Invasive Procedures', 'Playing God', 'Facets', 'Equilibrium', etc (yep, we're pretending that TNG episode didn't happen) - some of which I'd seen a lot (Facets is one of my favourites). I didn't reread 'The Lives of Dax', which I read when it was published (1999 - eek), although I borrowed the name given to Jadzia's sister there; using book canon stuff is always tricky and unless someone's specified they're familiar with it, it's best to avoid it.
A couple of commenters noted that they'd expected the story to actually show us the joining, which I'd considered, but as I was writing I realised that we know it happens, we know how it works out - that's the character we see, and love, on the show.
The conversations in 'Playing God' - Jadzia talking to an initiate about what he's going to do when he's joined, what you need to bring to it - shaped the last part. Because it was all about needing to know what you're going to do - not just a career but a life - when joined. So it seemed like the determination to do that regardless of whether you ended up joined or not was what needed to happen - you needed to want joining so badly to go through it all but still have the strength to not fall to pieces if you didn't get it in order to get a symbiont. Wacky Trills.
So yes. These are my thoughts. I did recs over at![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.2)
yuletide, and also want to add praise for Cougar Town fic I read after that. See you all for Yuletide 2012!
Some general thoughts: I'm not super-involved in fandom anymore, but Yuletide is one I can't stay away from. This was my ninth year doing it. Most years I've been lucky enough to get fandoms that I've written snippets for before - the difficult part for me is always the 1000+ word aspect of it, because my tendency is to write 500-word fics.
This was the first year I'd written DS9 for Yuletide, although I received a nifty DS9 last year. I didn't request it this year, because I didn't have anything specific I wanted, and I've read a lot of DS9 fic, but it was an amazing year for DS9 fic and there were many, many extraordinary fics for this show that finished over a decade ago.
I really must be more specific with my prompts, even though ultimately it boils down to 'seriously, have fun with it and I'm sure I'll love it'. This is a policy that's served me well, but I know my writer would've liked a little more guidance, and also when I was looking for Madness-y things I really liked having specific ideas (combined with 'or anything really'). (I did get put off by epic 'here's what not to do' lists, particularly when the default assumption seemed to be that the writer was a homophobic sexist racist pig. True for much of the internet, maybe, but the corner of fandom that does Yuletide tends to be pretty aware and reflective.)
So. I wrote Immortal, a gen DS9 fic for
bebunny, who wrote: ...since I've not really gone looking or read much ST fic at all, let alone DS9, I'm happy to be surprised. I have a deep abiding love of Jadzia Dax though, especially when it comes to her history.My DS9 pairing of choice is Bashir/O'Brien, but I have a healthy worship of most of the characters, including Jadzia. I'd written Jadzia/pre-joining-Ezri before, as well as Ezri-has-previous-hosts-angst, and the whole Trill thing fascinates me. Joining is such a big deal, and it's this huge honour but also an incredible responsibility. You're joined and you know that the symbiont becomes the priority - and at the same time, that's a good thing, because it has your memories, there's a part of you that goes on.
So with Jadzia Dax's history, there were two ways of approaching it - Dax, the symbiont, or Jadzia, the host. I went with the host - the snippets of this girl that we see in Invasive Procedures, the girl described as shy and quiet before joining (yet still clearly having something that made her get through initiation).
I rewatched the classic Trill episodes - 'Dax', 'Invasive Procedures', 'Playing God', 'Facets', 'Equilibrium', etc (yep, we're pretending that TNG episode didn't happen) - some of which I'd seen a lot (Facets is one of my favourites). I didn't reread 'The Lives of Dax', which I read when it was published (1999 - eek), although I borrowed the name given to Jadzia's sister there; using book canon stuff is always tricky and unless someone's specified they're familiar with it, it's best to avoid it.
A couple of commenters noted that they'd expected the story to actually show us the joining, which I'd considered, but as I was writing I realised that we know it happens, we know how it works out - that's the character we see, and love, on the show.
The conversations in 'Playing God' - Jadzia talking to an initiate about what he's going to do when he's joined, what you need to bring to it - shaped the last part. Because it was all about needing to know what you're going to do - not just a career but a life - when joined. So it seemed like the determination to do that regardless of whether you ended up joined or not was what needed to happen - you needed to want joining so badly to go through it all but still have the strength to not fall to pieces if you didn't get it in order to get a symbiont. Wacky Trills.
So yes. These are my thoughts. I did recs over at
yuletide, and also want to add praise for Cougar Town fic I read after that. See you all for Yuletide 2012!3 comments | Leave a comment
