(no subject)

II think I'm addicted to stroking Sable She is *so* plush! I have a theory that Sable is secretly a striped cat like her sister, but because she has about three times as much fur as Fluffy, light cannot escape so she appears black.

*

I was reading various rants on Metafilter about Why I Hate Christmas, and the like. Well, I don't hate Christmas, though there are aspects (CHRISTMAS MUSIC, particularly the kind recorded by 'crooners') which can be abominable. I mean, a feast and an exchange of gifts—which is what we do, I know other people will celebrate in a more religious way, but I just picked the food and the presents, and ISIHAC's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Christmas Carol while I cook the dinner.

Anyway, gifts. The gift-opening bit is good primarily for the pleasure of the people I've given gifts to. I mean, of course it's lovely to get something you want or didn't know you wanted, but managing to find the perfect gift to put a smile on someone else's face, that's what really counts. It was ever thus with SeSa stories—a happy recipient was more important than getting a really good story for yourself.

With that in mind (admire my segue!), are we happy few popslashers going to do a story exchange of some sort this year? I know something happened last year that I didn't have the capacity for. This year, obviously, I could use a little more Christmas pressure.

A little sparkle for your Christmas stocking?

So… I'm thinking a bit of no-pressure popslash for Christmas would be very cool.

Anybody remember the Sparkly Glee challenge from a few years back? It was here on LJ. As I recall, we could all put up prompts, and then claim prompts, and then write them and put them on the comm.

I'm not going to be that organised! I don't want to run something that needs to be regulated… what I thought was, I will put a master post up on crack_sparkle_pop here on DW, where we can each respond with a prompt, or half a dozen prompts, for a story or six or thirty-seven that we'd like to read. A bit like we did back on the fic_requests LJ comm back in the day. I don't see any reason why there should be a deadline for prompts, so they could be put up at any time until, say, Dec 20th.

Anyone who wants to have a go at writing a gift fic can pick a prompt they fancy and have a go at it. If you know the person who put up the prompt, you'll have the option of trying to tailor it to that person's particular fancies, but the general intention will be that we all get just a wee smidgin of popslash in our Christmas stockings. (Mind you, in my experience the more specific you get with a fic, the better it turns out. So there's that.)

I will put up a Responses post, where you can all link to the story/stories(!!) you have produced, and a summary post after the last posting date so that everyone can see what has turned up.

Prompts can be pairing+mood ranging through to something fairly detailed—which I guess means we will get to see whether we writers actually prefer something specific to write or something a lot more generic. And I guess there is no reason why people who don't have time to produce a story should not put up prompts, or why people who can never think of prompts should not just do the writing part of the challenge.

I suggest the stories can appear on the comm from 24th December to 6th January, thus spanning the entire Twelve Days of Christmas (plus a bit, actually, but never mind that—those dates seem to encompass Christmas in a generous way).

Should we allow a broader range of pairings in the prompts than just Nsync and Backstreet? I'm inclined to say, why the hell not, since people will get to choose which prompts they want to pick up. So non-pop persons such as the bandom boys, Adam Lambert, personable actors etc, and also fictional canons of all kinds, would be allowed. Should we allow people to answer their own prompts? ie if there's a popslash story you always meant to write and never got round to, can you just stick up a prompt and write the thing?

I don't know if this will work. Without the specific constraints of Make The Yuletide Gay (and Don We Now Our Gay Apparel, back in the day), it may be that none of us will actually write anything—this would be a pity, but eh. If we don't, we don't.

What do people think? Would you be interested in having a go on such a basis? Any improvements to the general idea? Am I out of my mind*?



* Quite probably.