Sweet Yuletide

As Yuletide nominations season comes up, I'm thinking again about my rather odd relationship with Yuletide and trying to figure out whether I want to put in nominations.

The thing is, I've never actually participated in Yuletide, for any number of reasons. For a long time I simply wasn't completing fic, so making a commitment that I was unlikely to follow through on seemed like a bad call. This goes double given the intensity that is the month of December if you do anything at all that touches online advertising, which my work more than does. In the last couple of years, there have also been usability concerns--I don't want to AO3 bash because I mostly love them, but the webform to enter a challenge just does not get along with my brain at all in some fundamental way--the honest truth is that I've yet to successfully fill out any challenge form and get to the point of submission. I've started a few, and wound up giving up and wandering away every time.

And yet Yuletide is vital to me. Sitting down and abandoning myself to the flood of stories has become an essential part of getting through a week at my parents' without a car. I rec, I comment (oh boy do I comment--a few years ago I think I made more comments than anyone else who hadn't submitted a fic?) And, more recently, I've taken to lurking around the pinch hit list hoping to be inspired. My first completed story after eight years was last December, a New Years Resolution inspired by a request post that floated across the pinch-hitters list and was claimed by someone else.

So... I love Yuletide. I want to be with Yuletide. But DAMN am I a committmentphobe around Yuletide. I'm almost certainly not signing up this year, although I do hope to do some solid writing in late December. I just don't plan to *start* until December 26. So *given* all that, nominating fandoms seems uncool. On the other hand, what if I nominate fandoms other people won't think of until they see them on the list, and then they decide to request them? (I can talk myself into anything...)

Anyway, if I *were* to be nominating, I think I've got my list for this year narrowed down to:

Either fandom: mid-twentieth-century queers with an Auden + Isherwood focus OR just straight-up admit what I want and nom Lions and Shadows

Either The Magicians/The Magician Kings or Anathem, the two intellectual communities books of my 2010 heart. (Even though I'm rather fond of "With Blood They Wash in the Money", it makes me DEEPLY SAD that it's the only Anathem fic currently in the AO3. It's a Killjoys crossover and has only OCs from the Anathem universe. That book needs more love, damnit!)

Among Others SO MUCH AMONG OTHERS.

Hopefully showering will be possible by the time Marina gets here

Had really lovely dinner with kuwdora tonight, wherein we plotted next week's Adventures With marina, I learned about Sanctuary, and kuwdora learned that in my head all of bandom is SECRETLY six degrees of Mormons and ex-Mormons. (Some people think of it as six degrees of Pete Wentz and Gerard Way, but apparently for me it's six degrees of Brendon Urie and Bert McCracken.)

And then I got home to find the hot water heater leaking all over the kitchen floor, because while my new home is the most adorable and most reasonably priced apartment in San Francisco it is NOT the lowest-maintenance. (In order to get working internet, I wound up having to have AT&T rewire the phone lines completely last weekend. On the bright side, FIBEROPTIC O.O)

One conversation with the Hot Water Heater Company and two with the Building Management Company later, I will apparently have someone out to take a look at it first thing in the morning. Let us keep our fingers crossed that the Hot Water Heater Company people are wrong and it doesn't require replacement, SHALL WE?

Also let's celebrate my calm in the face of large puddles, and the very clear documentation on the side of the heater for (a) turning off the gas and water and (b) calling the necessary people to resolve the problem.