the deep moans round with many voices

Yuletide reveal day!

I wrote To Be of Use for qwerty, aka xsmoonshine. The fandom is Diana Wynne Jones's The Homeward Bounders, a YA fantasy book. (The slightly revised ff.net version is here; basically, I killed a typo and smoothed some minor narrative flow and clarity issues.)

I shall summarize the book for those of you (which is probably most of you, sadly) who have not read it: There are many, many worlds, and there is a group of demon-like beings called Them who run all the worlds as a set of giant war games, like Risk. Now and then people discover the truth and are exiled to walk the Boundaries, which means they travel from world to world trying to get Home.

Jamie Hamilton, a boy from a version of England circa 1880, is our narrator. In the course of his wanderings he meets other Homeward Bounders, most notably Helen Haras-Uquara, whose world is rather like a real-life version of Dungeons and Dragons (she's kind of a cleric equivalent), and Joris, an apprentice demon hunter who is also a slave. They realize they can direct their own travels instead of waiting for Them to fling them about, and begin to fight back.

The brilliant thing about The Homeward Bounders as a fanfiction source is that it has so many possibilities -- infinite worlds to choose as settings and a lot of interesting characters who clearly had lives before they were rudely yanked out of them and will most likely continue to have interesting lives after the end of the book. But my story deals only with Joris and his master, Konstam Khan.

Joris thinks Konstam is the most amazing person in the world (and to be fair, he's mostly right), but he hates being a slave. Fortunately, Konstam reveals during the course of the book that he plans to manumit Joris as soon as he turns eighteen; he'd do it sooner but that would be illegal. (I think Konstam thought his intentions were obvious, which, clearly, they were not to Joris; they seem to have a slight culture clash over the issue of slavery.)

To Be of Use is an explanation of how Konstam and Joris first met, and why Konstam bought a slave when he doesn't seem enamored of slavery as an institution. It's also a small demon hunting adventure, because this is Joris and Konstam. (One is a rich scion of a world-famous family! The other is his slave! Together, They Fight Demons! *grin*)

I didn't start writing my Yuletide story until fairly late in the game, but I'd been outlining it in my head for nearly a week before that. The trouble is that the story as outlined required too much time to write, so I sectioned off the second part as a standalone. (This worked because the original plan involved four or five mini-stories that all built together toward a unified effect.)

Anyway, I chopped the first 1,500 words off into a separate file and today I put a rough conclusion onto that section (which had not been necessary before, when it led into the section that became my posted story). Sometime after the author reveal, I will ask if anyone is willing to check it over for me, because right now I think it's kind of hammer in the face unsubtle on the thematic front.

I may or may not get around to doing something with the other parts of my original outline, but I still got two stories for the price of one, which is, I think, a pretty good deal.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

I'm pretty easy to please, really -- so long as you write a grammatically correct story that isn't simply a long sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version.

***************

( General Information )

Okay. On to specific fandoms.

***************

( Westmark )

***************

( The Lions of Al-Rassan )

***************

( Heroes Die & Blade of Tyshalle )

***************

( Song for the Basilisk )

***************

ETA: I will try my best to comment on Christmas morning, but time and family constraints may prevent more than a general "Yay, thank you!" and then I won't have internet access again until Sunday the 28th. But I will be very appreciative nonetheless!

Is anyone willing to do a last-minute beta on my Yuletide story? I think it's fairly comprehensible even without specific fandom knowledge (I certainly tried to make it work that way, anyway), and I've been pretty careful about canon-accuracy on my own, so what I really need is someone to read it over and see if I managed to successfully paste on a sort of unifying theme, and tell me if my transitions are wonky or my characterizations seem flat.

I can give more details via email if you're willing to help.

ETA: Thank you, uminohikari! And I was a whole hour and fifteen minutes ahead of the official deadline this time, vs. the latest Femgenficathon where I think I squeaked in with about ten minutes to go. Not much of an improvement, really, but I'll take what I can get. :-)

*wants it to be Christmas already*

You know, the brilliant thing about Yuletide is that I have a perfect excuse to rewatch some good movies and reread a lot of old favorite books and/or comics, so as to disguise which one I am really studying for nefarious fanfic-writing purposes. *evil grin*

On another topic, I have a weekend! I haven't had a proper weekend (which I define as 'two days off work in a row,' regardless of its placement relative to Saturday and Sunday) in at least a month. I think I shall do laundry, buy groceries, write a lot, and watch some old school Doctor Who episodes I just rented from Planet Hollywood.

Free time is a glorious thing.