Yuletide 2013 First Glance

[brightknightie]

Merry Christmas!

I always have too many other commitments at Yuletide time, and, having never played, I don't understand the game's intricacies. However, if I'm reading the 2013 Yuletide AO3 Collection correctly, Forever Knight scored one story ("Copper's Instinct," ~6K words), the original Battlestar Galactica two stories (both starring Sheba, one apparently serious and the other evidently absurd; guess which one I'll read ~grin~), the original TV Beauty and the Beast one story ("To Laugh is to Love," ~1K words), the animated Dungeons and Dragons one story (but I'm not going to read it; its tags reveal that it's squicky), and of course Sleepy Hollow has stories coming out of its ears (it's often obvious which series get their one turn at Yuletide in their premiere year only because they're new, not because they're "small").

Highlander and Person of Interest weren't eligible. Yong Blades was, but not nearly enough people love it as it deserves... and there don't seem to be any more closely Dumas-based stories this year, which is even sadder. Nothing for Call the Midwife, either (perhaps everyone is still catching up on the books on which the series is based, before feeling a need for fanfic).

Have you spotted anything good out there in the ocean of Yuledtide fanfic? Please recommend it!

Comments

[argentum_ls]

Do you know that there's a Highlander fest? Its stories are posting this time of year, too. One of them might be mine :)

hlh-shortcuts.livejournal.com

[brightknightie]

I do know; thanks! :-) I've been on that LJ community for a few years.

I have tabs open for seven of the stories posted so far this year. Judging from the opening notes, those are the ones I'm willing to taste without the additional clue of the authors' names.

Going from the opening stats list, I'm delighted that there's so much gen this year! I'm a little disheartened, as always, that there's apparently no Tessa, Anne, Charlie, Angie, etc. (although I did see that Maurice has won a place this year, which is encouraging... yay, story diversity!).

[argentum_ls]

Oh, good. From your lamentation, I thought you might be missing the whole trove of Highlander stories. Having a separate fest is so much better than the one or two stories we might get if included in Yuletide.

I, too, am delighted with both the amount of gen and the number of atypical characters. I hope this trend will continue through the rest of the fest.

Is there anything in particular you're hoping to avoid? I've read (though not yet commented on) most everything so far, and hope to continue that. I'd be happy to give you heads up on story contents.

[brightknightie]

>"Is there anything in particular you're hoping to avoid?"

It's very kind of you to ask! However, my tastes are just so widely different from the majority of people who still play HL that, in this event, it's more a matter of hoping to luck into a story that surprises me by reaching through the differences and grabbing on. :-)

Many of the stories will be well-written and thoughtful, and will still not greatly appeal to me, personally. (I don't get much from Methos, you see. ~shrug~ I'm an odd duck.)

[argentum_ls]

We all have our narrative quirks that speak to us, and those that really don't, so I certainly understand where you're coming from. I hope you find a story or two to enjoy in the mix. Perhaps next year you'll find the time to join the festivities so we can guarantee some variety.

[chelseagirl]

I wondered about that -- Sleepy Hollow and Agents of SHIELD will both presumably be disqualified after this year. Can shows come back *into* qualification once their fandoms have shrunk in later years?

[brightknightie]

>"Can shows come back *into* qualification once their fandoms have shrunk in later years?"

I don't know whether this is possible under the current rules, which count how many total stories exist online for a certain fandom. However, (1) the rules may change in the future and likely the qualifying threshold will fluctuate as fandom evolves, and (2) as an example of the rules and numbers changing every year, I understand that it's thanks to Greer that FK wasn't kicked out this year -- they began counting more diverse archives, and Mel's almost did us in; I understand that Greer argued that archives that haven't been updated in a decade or more shouldn't count "against" a fandom for Yuletide eligibility, and she successfully persuaded the mods of this.