yuletideness, styleofthing.

[ambientlight]

my yuletide santa is absolutely awesome, and not just because she is a Jiraishin fan. *_*

my flist is also awesome! but because i am nervous about being presumptuous and linking their fics, especially the fics of those i do not know all that well, um. i shall content myself with the knowledge that i reviewed some of their pieces, and end this part of the post before my social neuroses render me incapable of ever posting to this lj again.

***

I wrote The Questionable Theology of Suzumiya Haruhi for v_voltaire.

The usual cringing-at-own-writing aside, Yuletide was a good experience, I think. I was lucky to receive a clear-cut request. I'm used to writing from prompts -- too used to it, even, because I don't think I've written any unprompted fic in a while -- so I didn't panic about that bit. I did, however, panic a lot about the complexity of canon (because even in Yuletide fic I feel the crippling need to adhere as closely as possible to canon), the necessity for some semblance of a plot (always a problem, this), my general inability to write humorous fic, and what was probably the biggest challenge: writing in first-person.

Before this, I hadn't written fic in first-person since my early days in harry potter fandom -- partly because I find it hard to take on someone else's personality, despite having none of my own.¹ Fortunately, Kyon's voice is both distinct and distinctive. I marathoned the anime and browsed bits of the translated novels before and during the writing process, and it seemed to work out. I even managed to shoehorn my fic into a gap in canon,² with the tiniest bit of authorial licence³ with regard to Shamisen -- although this is mostly the sort of thing I do for my own amusement/satisfaction when writing. ^_^;;

In the end, well. At around 6500 words, it ended up being the longest fic I've written in ages. Possibly ever. It was certainly the longest thing I've written in Notepad. :x (I didn't want to have to bother with the fiddly business of making sure that Microsoft Word didn't change the punctuation, as it is wont to do; and yes, I know, there are settings you can fiddle with to prevent that, but I was lazy. Er.) Which is a bit of an accomplishment, at least for the person of low standards that I am. More importantly, my recipient liked the fic, I think, which was a major major relief. ^_^ And I was awfully cheered by the very kind comments I received, because Kyon's voice and Haruhi's personality were the bits I flailed about most, really. And and and I was recced! by an author I really admire! My ego, it grows dangerously large. *_*;;

And now, in a move that reveals the lack of organisation in my thoughts, I shall babble about my offers. The thing was, you see, that MoSH wasn't even a fandom I'd initially offered. My first offer-list looked like this:

All characters: Diana Wynne Jones - Eight Days of Luke / Jigoku Shoujo / Jiraishin / Monster / Mushishi / Peacemaker Kurogane / The Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok
Limited characters: Classical mythology (Apollo/Athena/Dionysus/Hermes)

And then I panicked a bit when I realised that no one was requesting the fandoms I was offering, and that I might end up writing Classical mythology pairingfic. Especially with Dionysus in. (Classical mythology was sort of my 'Get out of jail free' option, because it had a healthy number of requests.) So I added some other fandoms:

Limited characters: The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi (Kyon/Koizumi) / Last Exile (Dio Eraclea/Luciola/Mullin Shetland) / Scrapped Princess (Pacifica/Raquel/Shannon)

Two things about my MoSH offer:
1. I'd wanted to avoid having to write Haruhi/anyone pairingfic, because Haruhi is one of those characters that I feel incapable of writing.
2. I assumed that Kyon/Itsuki requests were more likely to exist, compared to gen ones.

In other words, I ended up writing for an afterthought fandom which I'd expected to get a slash request for -- but for a gen request instead! Which made me happy, because I'd been steeling myself to write something pairing-y for Yuletide, and then it turned out that I didn't have to after all. Also because I'd never have written an MoSH fic of my own volition. And I got to write lots of Itsuki scenes quote Voltaire out of context, include a cameo for Pterry's Small Gods, and make major refs to Gaiman's American Gods! So all was well. I'm thankful to v_voltaire for making such a pleasant yet challenging (fandom-wise) request -- enough detail to guide, but not to be stifling -- and for giving me the chance to attempt MoSH fic. Bit guilty that I couldn't write for any of the other fandoms on the request, but. ^_^;;

¹I know: what a waste, eh? You'd think that not having a personality would grant you the superpower of personality absorption, or something, but life doesn't work that way, alas.
²I was lucky that The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi is a fandom with lots of fanboys, because there were some very useful resources around.
³Another bit of authorial licence was taken with the Small Gods cameo -- the Japanese title isn't actually a katakana rendition or even translation of Small Gods, but rather 『異端審問』, or Inquisition.