Yuletide and Book Fair

[selenak]

Last night, the Frankfurt Book Fair was opened, so in the next few days, it'll be books, books, books for me, and also politics, because as the opening speeches showed, the refugees (and certain infuriating people on the right) are so much on everyone's mind that you can't not debate. However, the fannish part of me did notice something:

All the accepted Yuletide nominations are up. I'm glad, because not only were all my nominations accepted but the coordination in the fandoms worked really well - Black Sails has 15 characters to choose form, The Americans 17. (!) (No one else nominated the Shardlake novels, but never mind, one can't have everything.)

Then there are a couple of fandoms I can offer in, and some I might be able to do a treat for if I have the time, but won't offer because it really depends on the prompt. Mind you, there are also a couple of fandoms where I would offer and every nominated character, too, but for the fact this could end up in landing me pairings I really don't want to write. The usual way to avoid this is to not offer one part of the pairing. The problem: take Bates Motel. I'd love to write about Emma, especially her relationship with Norma. I also would write about Dylan, in the context of his family. I just don't want to write Emma/Dylan, which is a popular pairing, so if I offer both of them, I have visions of being landed with just this combination. Penny Dreadful offers some similar problems, i.e. there's virtually no character I can't imagine writing about, but...

Anyway, that still leaves me with enough fandoms to offer. As for requests: I already have some pretty specific ideas. And now I'm off to the fair!

Comments

[likeadeuce]

Remember that per Yuletide rules you aren't required to write shipfic, just something that includes both characters. Of course, in that case you risk disappointing the recipient and the strategy of offering characters selectively can help avoid that :)

[selenak]

I know, that's always an out, but this is a present type of ficathon, and I know how I'd feel if I'd hoped for something specific and wouldn't get it. Hence the avoidance strategy. Mind you, in the past it happened once or twice that I got saddled with pairings (not just in Yuletide, in other ficathons as well) which I otherwise wouldn't have written, because I didn't think of excluding them, the result was unexpectedly rewarding, like that time my recipient wanted Worf/Dax (which I have nothing against, I just wouldn't have picked it). The toughest challenge was request for Anna/Morden (from Babylon 5), but the Day of the Dead gave me a way to pull that one off in a way that didn't squick me (which since Anna before her death had been lobotomized by the Shadows the pairing otherwise would have done).

[lookingforoctober]

Last year I offered one fandom twice in order to avoid the pairing I didn't want to write while still offering the characters I wanted to write in other combinations. It didn't seem to break anything (didn't get assigned that fandom though).

[selenak]

Hm, that's an interesting strategy, maybe I'll try it and see whether it works! Thank you for the idea.