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silveradept[Welcome back to December Days. This year, thanks to a suggestion from alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a few days left.]
The second Yuletide collection opened up today, so there's some other works that we get to peruse. They're all a lot shorter than the main collection, so they won't take nearly as long to read and enjoy.
Don't Hit It, Rockapella! (113 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Carmen Sandiego, Rockapella
Additional Tags: Crack, Humor, Character Study, Yuletide Treat, Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational, Yuletide Madness
Summary:
Alchemy (100 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Studying Girl (lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to)
Additional Tags: Magical Realism, Drabble, Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational, Yuletide Madness, Yuletide Treat, Alternate Universe - Magic
Summary:
The Magical Adventures of Jane Glorious (213 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Calvin & Hobbes
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Calvin (Calvin and Hobbes), Susie Derkins
Additional Tags: Imagination, Imaginary Friends, Playdates, Humor, Yuletide Madness, Yuletide Treat, Friendship, Double Drabble
Summary:
As you can see, all three of these are fabulous works and none of them more than three hundred words. Even if only one of them is a true drabble in the sense of being exactly one hundred words, they're all excellent short-form material.
The first one would be a paragraph or two in a greater work, possibly from Carmen's perspective on how she accomplishes a heist of one sort or another, and it's pretty neat the way that even she is unnerved at the persistent presence of the a capella group that seems to be following her around. And yet, even when faced with that idea, Carmen can still make it work. It's one of the charms of Carmen, that the improbable is never impossible with her.
The second one is all sorts of fun around the wildly popular internet stream that uses as its visual a screenshot of a girl wearing headphones and scratching her pencil on what looks to be homework. Because humans are storytelling creatures, of course, we start to speculate about what the girl is doing, and whether she's aware of the music stream, or whether, as in this case, she can control the music stream herself. Given the shortness of the work, we don't know if it's a conscious control, and if it follows her everywhere, but it's still a great story told in short amounts.
The last work takes the prompt I had in mind with Susie taking control of her own narrative and runs with it for just the beginnings of what could be a much bigger work if it wanted to go delving into Susie's mind in the way that the comic would do so into Calvin's. I would have enjoyed seeing a full amount of that imagination, and eventually, maybe, Calvin stepping in here and there to make the narrative work better and to make the storytelling much more impressive and fun for both of them. It's just enough to get started on something bigger, and the imagination can certainly work from there, which was always the fun of Calvin and Hobbes.
So, those were the three short works that were waiting for me in addition to the long work from yesterday. It's a pretty good set of examples for the idea that length doesn't necessarily matter in the telling of a good story.
And to bring up a topic from earlier again, I didn't have that much of a worry about the extra gifts once I knew that they were short. I could have had a much more terrible time with the actual gift itself, because it was a couple thousand words longer than the one I sent in, but that didn't get in my head, either. I think it was the shortness of the gift that didn't trip anything - a drabble could have been dashed off in only a few minutes or some shorter amount of time, even if the actual amount of time spent on it was more than that. (Significantly more than that, possibly.)
And then you can tuck in to the collection and see what all of the very neat works are in all the different fandoms that are available. Some of us are probably already at work on the next thing, but there's always the possibility of drop, as well. Once everything's been read, if there's nothing new coming forth, then there's a certain amount of unhappiness and malaise that can follow because it was a giant burst of the good stuff that makes fandom awesome, and then....nothing more. It's like coming back from convention and having to go back to the ordinary. If that's you, I understand. I suffer con drop pretty terribly, mostly because these days, I don't have a lot of people who were there that I can say "That thing was awesome!" with. Nice thing about exchange recommendations is that you can do it and it'll still be there for someone else to experience, too. Hooray for that. But even so, take care of yourselves. It'll be okay.
Eventually.
alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a few days left.]The second Yuletide collection opened up today, so there's some other works that we get to peruse. They're all a lot shorter than the main collection, so they won't take nearly as long to read and enjoy.
Don't Hit It, Rockapella! (113 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Carmen Sandiego, Rockapella
Additional Tags: Crack, Humor, Character Study, Yuletide Treat, Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational, Yuletide Madness
Summary:
Carmen should be used to these goofs showing up at the oddest of times.
While she's trying to lift a vase from the Victoria and Albert Museum is just the least opportune of them all.
Alchemy (100 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Studying Girl (lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to)
Additional Tags: Magical Realism, Drabble, Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational, Yuletide Madness, Yuletide Treat, Alternate Universe - Magic
Summary:
She is the engine.
The Magical Adventures of Jane Glorious (213 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Calvin & Hobbes
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Calvin (Calvin and Hobbes), Susie Derkins
Additional Tags: Imagination, Imaginary Friends, Playdates, Humor, Yuletide Madness, Yuletide Treat, Friendship, Double Drabble
Summary:
Calvin reacts predictably to being invited into Susie's room for a playdate.
But Susie is determined to show him she's just as imaginative as he is.
As you can see, all three of these are fabulous works and none of them more than three hundred words. Even if only one of them is a true drabble in the sense of being exactly one hundred words, they're all excellent short-form material.
The first one would be a paragraph or two in a greater work, possibly from Carmen's perspective on how she accomplishes a heist of one sort or another, and it's pretty neat the way that even she is unnerved at the persistent presence of the a capella group that seems to be following her around. And yet, even when faced with that idea, Carmen can still make it work. It's one of the charms of Carmen, that the improbable is never impossible with her.
The second one is all sorts of fun around the wildly popular internet stream that uses as its visual a screenshot of a girl wearing headphones and scratching her pencil on what looks to be homework. Because humans are storytelling creatures, of course, we start to speculate about what the girl is doing, and whether she's aware of the music stream, or whether, as in this case, she can control the music stream herself. Given the shortness of the work, we don't know if it's a conscious control, and if it follows her everywhere, but it's still a great story told in short amounts.
The last work takes the prompt I had in mind with Susie taking control of her own narrative and runs with it for just the beginnings of what could be a much bigger work if it wanted to go delving into Susie's mind in the way that the comic would do so into Calvin's. I would have enjoyed seeing a full amount of that imagination, and eventually, maybe, Calvin stepping in here and there to make the narrative work better and to make the storytelling much more impressive and fun for both of them. It's just enough to get started on something bigger, and the imagination can certainly work from there, which was always the fun of Calvin and Hobbes.
So, those were the three short works that were waiting for me in addition to the long work from yesterday. It's a pretty good set of examples for the idea that length doesn't necessarily matter in the telling of a good story.
And to bring up a topic from earlier again, I didn't have that much of a worry about the extra gifts once I knew that they were short. I could have had a much more terrible time with the actual gift itself, because it was a couple thousand words longer than the one I sent in, but that didn't get in my head, either. I think it was the shortness of the gift that didn't trip anything - a drabble could have been dashed off in only a few minutes or some shorter amount of time, even if the actual amount of time spent on it was more than that. (Significantly more than that, possibly.)
And then you can tuck in to the collection and see what all of the very neat works are in all the different fandoms that are available. Some of us are probably already at work on the next thing, but there's always the possibility of drop, as well. Once everything's been read, if there's nothing new coming forth, then there's a certain amount of unhappiness and malaise that can follow because it was a giant burst of the good stuff that makes fandom awesome, and then....nothing more. It's like coming back from convention and having to go back to the ordinary. If that's you, I understand. I suffer con drop pretty terribly, mostly because these days, I don't have a lot of people who were there that I can say "That thing was awesome!" with. Nice thing about exchange recommendations is that you can do it and it'll still be there for someone else to experience, too. Hooray for that. But even so, take care of yourselves. It'll be okay.
Eventually.
