quillori

I have done very well out of the last few Yuletides. This year I had a delightful haul of stories: rather neatly, one story per request. My assigned writer was kynical, who wrote me The Doom of Aratta, about the Lord of Aratta, a favourite figure of mine. Then my recipient from last year, the excellent lnhammer (also to be found at lnhammer, where I strongly encourage you to go to read his translations from the kokinshu) wrote me Green. I am still amazed that I could ask for something based on a poem of Li Shangyin's – a poem obscure even for him – and have someone write it for me. You can find translations of the poem here and here, but in any case you should consider reading Green, which stands on its own (though I can assure you it is even better if you are familiar with the poem). Then, because my good fortune knows no bounds, fresne wrote me Questionable N which is just exactly the sort of story I asked for, and can be read by anyone with an interest in fandom or storytelling.

This year I also wrote three stories. My main story was Far Too Many Questions, With Some Quite Dubious Answers. My recipient asked for Child's Ballads, any, with no optional details, causing me to flail around panicking with no idea what to do. (You will readily see how that is quite different from the years my recipient makes specific requests I don't want to write, and the years they make requests I want to write very much but immediately realise I'm incapable of doing justice to. These are three entirely different flavours of panicked flailing.)

( Discussion of story / Complaint re difficulty of translating from a language I do not speak )

Then I wrote That Black Forest for kassidy62, who asked for Little Red Riding Hood and horror, and Downstream On The Memphis Ferry (Egyptian Mythology) for redsnake05, which, somewhat unusually for me, I enjoyed writing. It, along with last year's Dress Ye Never So Fair (also Child's Ballads and related material) and my first year Yuletideing pinch-hit Seven Songs for Isis (also Egyptian Mythology, hopefully one day to be disinterred from the old Yuletide archive, so I can perform several necessary bits of editing, including one rather important chapter title) suggest I have a talent for somewhat obscure and mildly disturbing on a very tight deadline. Whether this is a valuable or useful skill is another question.