2012 edit: this was due for an update.  Hi everyone!  Feel free to add me and say hi here if I don't know you, or if we haven't spoken in a while; I like adding new people, I just like talking to them first!

Public: Assorted things.  Gifs.

Locked: A lot of stuff, my access filter is not exactly a treasure trove of secrets and personal information, so if you want to be on it just lemme know.

Private: To-do lists.  Posts checking the formatting of extremely long stories and their cut-tags in the two minutes before I post them.

That probably about covers it.  Being the kind of person who checks phone email at important meetings, I am pretty much always reachable.  I hate scallions, though, so please don't try to get me to friend you, scallion_fans.

If you really want to hang out, though, you probably want my Tumblr.

Hi, Yuletide writer! Thank you so much in advance for writing for me, I deeply look forward to whatever you have in store. ♥ I've been around the Yuletide block several times and you can find my previous letters here if you're interested. I'm pretty easy, and my preferences haven't changed that much.

My AO3 name is prodigy. You can find me on Tumblr at ourlightsinvain or consult my good friend relia/lifecrystals if you're interested in scoping out my tastes.

I like: all ratings; happy and unhappy endings; romance; explicit sex and porn in non-PWP stories; gothic, horror-, and suspense-themed stories; canon-typical casefic and self-contained plots; linear and nonlinear storytelling; humor, including in dark and dramatic situations; canon-divergent AUs; pre-canon and backstory fic; interactive fiction; uneven and fraught power dynamics; worldbuilding.

I don't like: PWP; fluff or domesticity fic; setting-based AUs (college, historical, etc.); crossovers and fusions.

I'm opting into Crueltide and IF, which will both be links when they're up!

( Fate/Zero )

( Lackadaisy )

( Alien: Covenant )

Hello, Yuletide writer! Hello, journal I use once a year! Thank you so much in advance for writing for me--I'm tremendously excited for the results. First off, don't sweat it, no pressure, and everything of that nature: if you have an idea you're passionate about that bends or breaks one of the preferences I express in this letter, I'd much rather read the fic you want to write than the fic I envisioned. You can consult my AO3 account and my Tumblr for more information about me and my likes. If you have any further questions, feel free to consult my friend relia or the mods, as suits you.

I like: plot and character arcs; canon-divergence what-if AUs; humor, whether wry and bittersweet or screwball; family relationships and friendships; politics (in the sense of in-universe maneuvering); adventure and hijinks; angst and bad things and tragedy (where applicable); world and backstory development.

I'm not so into: fluff; pure introspection; PWP.

As for other preferences: I love interactive fiction! I normally am all down with Crueltide but I don't know if any of my prompts suit it this year--if some particularly nasty idea gets into your head, though, go for it, I don't have any particular squicks. As for Yuleporn, I'm totally fine with and happy with sex being incorporated into the fic at large, but I don't necessarily like PWP, as I said.

( Lymond Chronicles )

( Hamilton )

( 80 Days )

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hello and apologies that this letter's so late-- I got your message through the mods, please excuse my tardiness due to IRL busyness. Thank you in advance for putting this much thought into writing me a gift I'll like! I'm sure it'll be great and I hope you have fun writing it and don't stress too much.

If you've read my letter from last year or previous years, then you already know some general stuff. Not much has changed in that department, except that the kinds of requests I have this year may lend themselves to different things-- you can still find me on Tumblr at ourlightsinvain where I update a lot more than I do here.

A couple words on dark content and triggers and other stuff: several of these are at least semi-horror canons, several are violent, and one contains an at least borderline-abusive, if not straight-up abusive relationship. I wanted to say you can consider yourself to have basically carte blanche on violence, horror, abuse, and such to your discretion as suits the canon of each--I don't really have fic triggers and as long as everything is properly marked I'd be happy to receive IC darkfic. More details on how that applies to the individual canons below.

I'm also open to fic of any rating--I might put a comment on the Yuleporn post saying so, but it mostly just applies to my BioShock: Infinite request. More on that in its section. But basically, if you have an idea for something but it involves content you're worried about, go ahead-- I read body horror, guro, dubcon and noncon, and a bunch of other stuff in that vein, so I wouldn't worry about putting me off, if it suits the story. I'm not sure that'll come up much with my particular requests, but I figured I'd let you know. Also, if you're not interested in writing darkfic whatsoever don't worry about it-- that's not a request, just a disclaimer.

Onto the requests! I have them all blacked out in spoiler text since three of the canons came out just this year and ALMN would look, uh, lonely by itself.

( American Elsewhere )

( The Folly of the World )

( A Little Night Music )

( BioShock Infinite )

If you have any more questions, you can go through the mods or, alternately, feel free to ask my friend relia/lifecrystals, who knows my preferences fairly well. Thanks again for your interest and your efforts, and happy writing!

Stealing this from qian to give it a try!

What are you reading now?

I know themis will probably roll her eyes at my recurring insistence on braving the Byatt gauntlet despite her overwroughtness and obsession with playing out the same gender roles in fiction over and over, but... I can't help it, her prose style has a certain je ne sais quoi. So I just finished with "Morpho Eugenia" which--had a lot of Byatt weaknesses in it, like uncomfortable exotification of a non-English locale as a metaphorical backdrop for what the English characters are up to, and presenting heterosexuality with that same vaguely predatory, conquest-based framework from the man's perspective, and in general I didn't care for it. But we'll see how I feel about "The Conjugial Angel," which is the second half of Angels & Insects.

My other problem with "Morpho Eugenia" was the really boring and typical treatment of incest. I feel like incest in fiction, unless the story is About Incest in and of itself (and even then), always takes place between these two beautiful ciphers of people who just decide to start defying Westermarck just.. because... and outside the context of the kinds of toxic family environments in which these things actually transpire, and ignores that it's kind of one symptom that usually goes along with a whole syndrome of family dysfunction, not a sexy taboo act that springs out of nowhere. Then again, it's almost always a heavy-handed metaphor for something, or a lurid detail. Sigh.

I'm also reading Emma because I feel like it, which is, of course, much better. Emma Woodhouse! It's kind of fun to mentally exercise yourself trying to speculate what other literary characters she directly influenced.

What did you just finish reading? Apparently what I've read so far in 2013 has been:

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch: Fun! Great fun. I don't say that lightly, I do not generally find crime-procedural urban fantasy to be any fun whatsoever. But it's funny and upbeat and fairly creepy reading, actually, with a pretty horrific villain and supernatural conceit, and Peter Grant and Thomas Nightingale (I think he's a Thomas, anyway) are pretty endearing.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt: I... don't really understand this book's strange, melodramatic appeal, and yet I am sure I would and will reread it sometime. I think it has something to do with Francis. (There's a great YT fic called the mother of beauty from this year.)
The Bone Key by Sarah Monette: Collection of Kyle Murchison Booth stories, which I have finally gotten around to reading all of. They're... uneven overall, and variable, and have a tendency to be kind of anachronistic, and I don't really like how Monette writes women in her horror stories, it cleaves rather closely and without much subversion to many misogynistic horror tropes (and horror is basically a collection of misogynistic tropes). But I'd read more of them, I admit. I like "The Green Glass Paperweight" and "Drowning Palmer."
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter: One of those "things I never got around to reading in the stage in my development when I should've!" It's... good, although I think it suffers from some Seinfeld Is Unfunny for younger people like me through no fault of its own and due to the oversaturation of dark feminist fairytales in the past 10 years?
The Magician King by Lev Grossman: Aaaaaargh. Basically everything that was piss-annoying about Grossman as an author in The Magicians was amplified, and--you know, I actually liked The Magicians, in spite of my general desire to slap the male heterosexuality right out of Grossman's authorial perspective, but The Magician King was just a mess and went from bad to worse in how it treated women. Not good.
Cotillion by Georgette Heyer: Heyer's so all-over-the-place for me but this one was really, really fun. And hilarious.

Dad: Can yoyu translate "mutatis mutandis"?

me: yeah, it's an idiom - meaning, roughly, changing what is to be changed, or changing what must be changed
only the necessary changes

Dad: you googled it? :D

me: nah, but i didn't translate it either
i recognized it
so i can't really take the credit
taking a crack at the grammar from scratch though, it's not a complete sentence, but then again, most things like this aren't
it's like, a clause you'd put in a sentence about something else to qualify it
(it's funny you should ask, i'm reading a novel right now about greek/latin/classics students at a college)

Dad: can you translate "I came... I saw... I made bugs" ?

Me: haha okay
hmm
i don't know the declension for insectum off the top of my head, so i'm going to assume it's... 3rd, i think
veni, vidi, feci insecta
if you literally mean bugs as in the creepy crawlies
and not 'mistakes'

Dad: thanks :)

Me: perhaps if you're making a programming language
err, programming reference

Dad: yeah

Me: what you're looking for is veni, vidi, feci errata

Dad: "bugs" would be "defects"

Me: yeah, i'd go with errata

Dad: ok!

---

ETA: ... later that same day...

Joyeux Noel to e'eryone who celebrates. ♥

For Yuletide this year I got a lovely, bittersweet little Scarlet Pimpernel fic, The Truth of Her Face. Thank you, nonnie!

The challenge seems to have gone off this year with hardly any hitches at all, aside from some on the participant end of things (whoa, that is a lot of defaulters); overall it's been great, however, and I hope everyone's having a good holiday season whether or not you participate.

 So I guess you've all probably heard enough about this if you follow me on any other social platforms, but I don't even caaaaare, I'm in that floaty bubble where you mostly have not started thinking about all the ways the BBC could mess up that thing you care about.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hi there, mysterious person! Thanks in advance for writing my Yuletide fic, I’m sure it’s going to be awesome. I think I should let you know right off the bat that I am pretty damn easygoing about challenge and exchange fics: below and in the prompts I’ve listed what I had in mind requesting each fandom, but if you find yourself fired by a burst of inspiration that gives you a different idea, do it. \o/ I’m sure I’ll be thrilled.

I figure I’ll just list some stuff I generally like and don’t like in fic, to give you a better idea of my tastes! Keep in mind these are all totally optional and in fact not all of them are going to fit any given prompt or fandom, so please don’t stress about how to include a particular thing -- they’re meant to help you brainstorm! In addition, you can check out my AO3 account for fics I’ve written and bookmarked, my DW profile for some of my interests, and my Tumblr to watch me dick around for whatever reason.

… incidentally, this appears to be the year where I requested four different angst-and-tragedy prompts by coincidence so ahahaha sorry about that. Apparently this Yuletide is my Year of Starcrossedness. Also, as three out of four of my requests turned out to be recent novels, I’m putting them all behind individual cuts as well as highlight-to-read spoiler text, just in case. The Scarlet Pimpernel prompt is not actually spoilery, but it looked lonely all by itself.

Some stuff I generally like: well-deployed humor and banter, bittersweetness, plot!, backstory, fun and detailed settings, non-linear storytelling, linear storytelling, meta, realistic and non-glorified depictions of war and violence, romance, social or humanist themes, politics, sex (also BDSM and BDSM dynamics), AUs and AU interpretations, fic that is critical or questioning of the source material, pastiche, fucked-up and problematic relationship dynamics, love-hate relationships, semi-unrequited love and other disparities in feeling, academic bullshit.

Some stuff I generally don’t: fluff and schmoop (errr however you define these terms, I’m using them to mean “fic written specifically to showcase some cute moment in a couple’s lives” or what have you), total canon-rigidity/canon-worship, sanitization of history, narratives where one person in a relationship is Completely Right.

( CNV )

( OTTU )

( TSP )

( CA )

In conclusion, please don’t freak out too much about your fic, as useless a reassurance as that is. You now know basically all you need to know about me in order to write a fic I’ll like, and I know one important thing about you: we have shared tastes. And that means you’re awesome. Go knock ‘em dead. ♥

Love,
prodigy

 Way too busy for ep reviews the past few weeks, hoping to get back on track with Blackwater.  But  this is my only episode reaction that really matters.