Yuletide 2025 letter

Oct. 23rd, 2025 12:34 pm
lea_hazel: I am surrounded by tiny red hearts (Feel: Love)
[personal profile] lea_hazel
Hello, Yuletide writer! Please feel free to peruse my letters from years past for additional prompts and ideas, if none of what you find in this letter sparks inspiration. Especially for fandoms that I've requested before, like The Saint of Steel in 2024, or Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem, practically every year.

General likes/dislikes )

Opt-ins )

DNWs )

Requested fandoms and prompts:

Long Live the Queen )

Galaxy Princess Zorana )

Palia )

The Saint of Steel - T. Kingfisher )

Lego Castle Theme (Toys) )

October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire )

Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem )

reading the tide

Oct. 21st, 2025 11:52 am
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Science: Brains)
[personal profile] lea_hazel
My tear through Yuletide-nominated fandoms continues. I'm still watching the Blue Prince videos, and last night, I finished reading K.J. Charles's All of Us Murderers, which is a savage, hilarious, and lovely gothic horror pastiche. All of KJC's familiar trademarks are at play.

Often, I highlight lines in my Kobo e-books. Usually, it's blue for lines that I particularly like, and then pink for anything that I think might be foreshadowing. About halfway through the book, I started journaling my thoughts and suspicions, much of it based on my knowledge of gothic horror themes and conventions. I did not suspect all the right people, and some of my guesses were off the mark, but I did pretty well. It's not a classic "fair-play whodunnit", but it definitely felt good to make lists of facts and suppositions, and to try and draw conclusions from them.

Early in the book, I was prepared to hold onto my negative feelings for the second male lead (Gideon), part and parcel of my uncomfortable habit of questioning why characters don't just up and leave the plot. Real winners quit, and all. But the book does a very good job of both explaining why Zeb didn't leave, and of selling me on the romantic plot, so that by the time that unfolds, I had zero reservations.

It also has one specific (hilarious) line that is very clearly there for us writers.

Increasingly, I can no longer claim I'm not a horror reader. More like, I'm a selective and cautious horror reader.

Once you cross the line

Oct. 20th, 2025 07:29 pm
lea_hazel: Don't make me look up from my book (Basic: Reading)
[personal profile] lea_hazel
On an unrelated note, I've been watching a series of (rather long) LP videos of professional puzzle experts playing Blue Prince. Starting with this video, where the comments say they solve certain puzzles much sooner than the average player, but still make enough frustrating mistakes that the livestream chat has to be heavily moderated for spoilers. And then all the way through the tenth video, when they reach the coveted room 46 and see the associated cut scene.

The Yuletide comment that recommended the game (which I am prudently not buying, for time management reasons) spoiled me for two or so key aspects of the lore, both of which are hinted at in the solved puzzles, but not necessarily definitively stated. I guess it depends how well you excel at reading subtext.

Making up my mind

Oct. 19th, 2025 11:27 am
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
[personal profile] lea_hazel
I nominated some fandoms I'm excited about for this year's Yuletide, but given the workload on the new project (and some other factors), I've been putting off signing up. Part of me is not entirely sure that it's a good idea for my time management. If I'm stressed about making a gift on time, I won't even enjoy the process (or the gift I receive) as much. So I'm thinking about it.

Meanwhile, I'm taking a short break from playing Galaxy Princess Zorana and watching a bunch of Blue Prince videos on YouTube.

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