the deep moans round with many voices

Today is Yuletide reveal day! Here is the story I wrote this year:

The Stolen Colors of Oz (5268 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Oz - L. Frank Baum
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Button-Bright, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Adventure, Misunderstandings, Colors, Giant Spiders, Negotiations, Whimsy

Summary: The chief difficulty with having lost his Magic Umbrella, Button-Bright reflected a few days after his arrival in the Emerald City with Trot and Cap'n Bill, was that it was harder to get to far-away places without it. On the other hand, having to travel through all the in-between places on his way from here to there did mean he got to see a lot of interesting things he might otherwise have missed.

(Written for moon_custafer)

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So, thoughts! moon_custafer and I actually matched on two fandoms -- the other being Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees -- but in the event I only had the time and spoons to write for one of them. (I might try writing a New Year Resolution fic for the other prompt, because I did have a good idea for it; it's just that Mirrlees has a trickier narrative voice to imitate under deadline pressure. *wry*)

Anyway, these two prompts gave me a perfect excuse to reread a number of books I have loved for a very long time, which is always welcome. And then I figured the best response to a prompt about A) people in Oz making adjustments that allow very different people with very different needs to live comfortably together, and B) Button-Bright as a vehicle for exploring that, was to write a story in which Button-Bright helps resolve a conflict between some people with superficially conflicting needs and also gets some insight into the ways his approach to the world is slightly askew from many other people's attitudes. (In other words, tell your parents you're alive, child! They must be worried out of their minds.)

( go read the fic before you read this part )

Anyway, I would have liked to make the story another thousand words longer, and go into a bit more detail about the cave, the spiders' army, the Farbers' army, and the general appearance of the colorless regions, but I think what's on the page works well enough. *wry*

We ended up having leftover Chinese for dinner last night rather than make jambalaya, because Mom over-ordered takeout on Saturday. Nobody minded; it was still delicious. :)

Our family had volunteered to usher at the 9pm Christmas Eve service, so we got into the car at 8pm and arrived in time to finish tidying up after the 7pm service and setting up for the new influx of people. The service itself was nice. I mean, they generally are. Beacon (...did I ever mention that my childhood congregation, which had spent decades wrangling over whether to call itself Unitarian Universalist, or just Unitarian, or a Congregation, or a Church, etcetera ad infinitum, finally did an end run around the issue by renaming itself Beacon: Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Summit? Because they did, a year or two ago) has a pretty set format that doesn't change much from year to year.

Afterwards we came home, drank champagne cocktails, and talked about this and that until maybe 12:30am, at which point I shut myself up in my childhood bedroom to finish the expanded version of my Yuletide assignment. I got it successfully tidied and posted around 3am. Then I crashed.

We had breakfast at about 9:45am this morning -- apple cinnamon muffins, bacon, softboiled eggs for everyone except Vicky (who dislikes cooked eggs), and fruit of choice (pineapple for Vicky, banana slices in orange juice for Mom and Dad, a clementine for me). Then we did gift-opening from about 10:30am onward, after which we participated in cleanup to various degrees and then went our separate ways.

I have commented on my Yuletide gift, which is lovely (I will make a rec post about it later), and now I'm going to take a nap since Susan will arrive around 3:30pm and past that point my day is booked pretty solid with socializing, dinner, and a movie-with-family.

I hope you all have an excellent day whether you're celebrating anything in particular or not! :D

It wasn't an official graduation because the semester doesn't end until the 14th, but pffft, whatever. I could bomb both my finals and I'd still be fine. (My grade point average would be unhappy, but I'd still pass, no sweat.)

Anyway, it was 6:00pm in the gymnasium of TC3. My parents drove up from NJ and picked me up from the rental company office. There were a few speakers, and then all the unofficial graduates walked up on stage, handed a little name-and-info card to the speaker, who read our names, majors, and any relevant accomplishments (this is where my new membership in Phi Theta Kappa, the two-year college equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa, came into play), after which we shook hands with the college president and received a pin since we aren't officially done and couldn't get our actual diplomas.

(Apparently the diplomas will be mailed in late December.)

Then Mom, Dad, and I went out for a celebratory dinner at The Antlers in Varna, which was quite tasty and has left me with enough extra food for another meal and a half. Mmm, delicious! Then they dropped me off back at the rental company office so I could drive the Camry home, since I needed to clear that parking space for New Hire 2 tomorrow morning. (On Saturdays, I park in Mom Boss's space, since she's not there and obviously New Hire 2 and I can't both park in space #56.)

So that was nice. :D

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In work news, today we rented a studio, which is always nice. We had verbal confirmation from a group of boys that they want to rent a 6-bedroom apartment, but they didn't make it in to the office before I closed at 5:00pm. Hopefully tomorrow! We also had two weird package glitches, which I will attempt to resolve tomorrow.

In other college news, I am about 1/3 done with my final State and Local Government class essay. I have a time set for my Spanish oral final (an ~5 minute phone call conversation) and have printed the sample written final so I can practice on it and be ready when Prof. G uploads and opens the actual written final. As I said above, I could bomb both and be fine, but I'd prefer to do well as a point of personal pride. *wry* (And also for my grade point average and future plans, of course. But mostly my pride.)

In fannish news, I am just about done with my final bit of Yuletide canon review, after which I get to pick which of my prompts to write, bang together an outline, and dive in. :) I am really hoping I have enough time and spoons to write both, because I think both lend themselves more to short fics than to something really long and plotty, and also because I love both canons dearly and would like to A) get a chance to play around with them and B) make my recipient extra specially happy when the archive goes live. :)

1. Thursday night I went to my induction ceremony for Phi Theta Kappa, which is the two-year college equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa (more or less), because why not. There were indifferent sandwiches, pretty good cupcakes, two good introductory speakers, and indifferent main speaker, and an unexpectedly dramatic moment after we'd all gone up front and signed the chapter membership book and been arranged on risers, when a mother was overcome with pride for her daughter's achievements. I felt a bit of a fraud for having taken the whole thing so lightly, but what the hell. Go proud student and proud mom!

2. Today we had sleet all afternoon, ugh. It eased off into cold rain as evening fell, and nothing stuck to the ground anyway, but it was still thoroughly unpleasant.

3. I showed and rented a three-bedroom apartment this afternoon, go me!

4. I wrote ~350 words toward a prompt fill, which are not terrible by any means but have made me realize that I am approaching the prompt from the wrong direction, so now I get to start all over again. *sigh* At least this time I know where I'm going instead of just kind of flailing around to see what clicks.

5. I am on the final lecture of my Italian Renaissance Great Courses series, and should definitely be able to return it to the library by Sunday.... only three weeks late. *headdesk*

6. I'm continuing to reread potential Yuletide canon material, and discovered I was sadly misled by the list of which books Character X appears in -- one of them seems to have made it onto the list solely because Character X is namechecked in one sentence placing them at Event Y that takes place at the end of the story. Gnrgh. Well, it's not like I didn't enjoy rereading that book despite the mixup. It's just a little annoying from a time-management perspective, you know?

7. I did a bit more background world-building and outlining for an f/f urban fantasy tetralogy with vaguely Lovecraftian flavor that I occasionally toy with writing. It still needs a lot of work before it becomes writable -- for example, at the moment one of my two antagonist groups is basically "evil conspiracy trying to drain/store magic for unnamed nefarious purposes," which is too flimsy for even a 1000-word ficlet. *wry*

The other antagonist group also needs a bit more solidity, but that plot thread is on much more stable footing -- probably because it has hooks into a lot of other emotional and character stuff instead of just sort of being there to make Required Plot Events happen. (These things happen when the central figure of the other antagonist group is your protagonist's estranged mother.) I'm sure I'll figure out a way to hook the Evil Conspiracy of Evil in on that level too, eventually -- probably via the protagonist's love interest, for balance and mirroring and stuff. But anyway, the upshot of today's work is that my protagonist (Sephy) now has a defined day job, I know how she and her love interest (Thorn) meet, I know how and why Thorn gets on the radar of the Evil Conspiracy of Evil, and I figured out the setup for why Sephy and Thorn start book 2 on shaky relationship ground. \o/

Stuff I have done so far today:

-bought cheese, crackers, and tiny clementines for after-service coffee hour

-helped set up for coffee hour instead of attending the church service (it's technically more work/energy, but less socially stressful, so, you know *makes equivocating gesture*)

-worked from 11:45 to 12:45 on coffee hour cleanup

-took the Camry to Goodyear to get the burned-out tail light replaced; the workers discovered the two plate lights were also burned out so I got them replaced as well

-bought a sheet of trash tags from the Meadow St. Tops (since my Tops, up on Triphammer, has mysteriously stopped carrying City of Ithaca tags *hands*)

-drove to the Triphammer Tops to do my grocery shopping (because I know that store's layout better, and also the two locations have slightly different items available)

-picked a tiny handful of raspberries and ate them outdoors because I could

-changed my linens

-took my two peppers that are attempting to flower outdoors in hopes that they'll manage to set fruit before I have to bring them indoors full-time over the winter

-arranged a phone date with Vicky

-continued refamiliarizing myself with one of my matched Yuletide fandoms

-wrote half of my to-do lists for next week

-listened to a full half-hour lecture from Etruscan history & culture Great Courses audiobook, and a lecture and a half of my Italian Renaissance Great Courses CD set (one's on my phone for around the house and while out walking; the other is for while I'm driving)

Now I intend to finish washing my lunch dishes and go take a nap, after which I will continue being productive, goshdarnit! :)