I really liked your post on your remix writing process as well! It's always fascinating to see how people approach the challenge, and then, of course, the process changes each year because each year you're working with a different story.

I am not as self-referential as I could be -- it's hard to carry every detail from story to story when a lot of my work is mutually contradictory or deliberately AU -- but when I get a piece of a character's backstory nailed down to my own satisfaction, I tend to carry it through every time I write that character thereafter. So, for example, every time I write Iruka, I assume the background from "Lessons," whether that's explicit in the story or not. I like the way that kind of subtle linking gives a sense of greater breadth and depth to individual stories.

Friend away -- I don't bite! :-)