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 В реках Чжуцзян (Pearl River),  Лицзян, Гуанси-Чжуанский Автономный Район Китая, водится рыба с гусиным ртом яцзуйюй  鸭嘴鱼 - на вкус похожа на  тропических змей и угорь. Кухня чжуанов Гуанси похожа на кухню соседних провинций Гуандун (со множеством блюд на пару и желеобразных соусов) и Хунань (острая, с обилием зеленого перца).

 soundcloud.com/electro-mix-memory/anja-schneider-2008-12-19-live-at-bki-noice-mobilee-special

If you don't know what Yuletide is (and I'm not referring to the general holiday sort of thing, but a particular fandom activity)...

How it Works
From the website: Yuletide is a gen, het, and slash multifandom secret fiction exchange for obscure or rarely written fandoms.

Right now they're in the nomination stage, where everyone who intends to participate nominates fandoms they think they'd like to request or write.

After that comes the sign-ups, when people make either three or four requests from the final list of nominated fandoms. You specify fandom and up to four characters, or you can say 'any'. You also add optional details, which can be story ideas or the sort of thing you like or whether you want your characters in a pairing or not. Optional details won't necessarily be written, the only thing the writer has to do is use the characters you specified, but the yuletide writers live to please.

In addition to requests, you say what fandoms you're willing to write (and specify characters within that). You will be matched as a writer for someone based on this. What's really cool about this (or has been in the past, it's a little more vague this year) is that when you specify characters you can say you don't want to write them together. Like, if I thought I could write a fic about either Josh or Ryan from the imaginary fandom Ghost Soup but didn't think I could write a fic about the two of them interacting, I could list the fandom Ghost Soup in my signup twice, once as Ghost Soup (Ryan) and once as Ghost Soup (Josh). If I was willing to write the character Emily interacting with either of them I could sign up as Ghost Soup (Emily/Ryan) and Ghost Soup (Emily/Josh) which means I could be matched with someone who had signed up with any of the following: Ghost Soup (Emily), Ghost Soup (Josh), Ghost Soup (Ryan), Ghost Soup (Emily/Ryan), Ghost Soup (Emily/Josh), but not anyone who had signed up with Ghost Soup (Josh/Ryan) or Ghost Soup (Emily/Josh/Ryan).

Note: the slash does not indicate romantic relationship. It's just a way to separate characters. Which is why optional details are important, where I could say that, if I were requesting Ghost Soup (Emily/Ryan) I'm really interested in the way Emily blew up at Ryan after he slept with Angela's clone.

Some time after sign-ups close comes the matching, and you get an email with the entire signup from your assigned person. They don't know that you have them. You are matched on one fandom only (it can happen that you actually match on two, but that's just random luck), but you can write whatever fandom of theirs you want. You have to include the characters they listed, and most people find it easier/nicer to include the optional details, but "optional details are optional". [This is why the official age of participation is 18, because someone could write their recipient NC-17 porn/violence.]

On December 25th the archive goes live (with authors listed as anonymous) and on January 1st author reveals happen.

Now, yuletide is a rare fandom exchange, which means that at least half the point is to be able to go "There's fanfic for that! That wasn't written by me? SQUEE!"

The current list of nominated fandoms is here: http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_nominated_fandoms.cgi , though it hasn't been trimmed yet. Supernatural, for instance, is definitely coming off when they do the looking for duplicates and things that aren't actually rare.

Wow, that took a while. Anyway. Now on to my nominations which, as always, head more for the obscure side of things than not.

My Nominated Fandoms
Cold Wind - Kitty and the Can Openers (song) has all the basic information in the title. I just. I love the dissonance between the lyrics and the tune.

It starts:
Here I am sittin on this empty porch again
I’ve got two minds to hold your hand or bash your brains in,
I’ve got two beers left
Maybe one could serve as a weapon

You can hear it here and I highly recommend you do. Not just because their music in general is gorgeous. Lyrics are here.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood - Arabesk trilogy is three books that are sort of cyberpunk and sort of alternate history (World War I never expanded out of the Balkans) but set in the future (in Alexandria) and are definitely gorgeous. They're gritty, violent mysteries, in a way.

The main character, Raf/ZeeZee, has a fox in his head, and he's fascinating in his own right. There's also Zara, the girl he's engaged to be married to who's suspicious and rebellious and so very three-dimensional.

"No rights?" Raf's voice was gentle. "Why not?"

"Tradition," said Zara bitterly. She stood up from the table. "You see Dad's case over there?" The briefcase was Calvin Klein, black crocodile skin. "That contains ten per cent of my dowry. You get a further fifty per cent when we marry, minus whatever your aunt's already had for expenses. The remainder you don't get for twelve months."

From the surprise on Raf's face it was obvious he hadn't known money was involved at all. "Twelve months ... ?"

"Apparently that's meant to stop you beating me." Zara stepped away from the bench. "Well, for the first year, at least ..." She turned to her father. "I'm sorry. I need to get some air."

I can literally talk about this series forever, so have a pimp post with some other quotes that I wrote up before over here.

Kick (tv) is an Australian tv series with a fairly wide variety of chromatic characters, including a canonically lesbian Muslim, Layla Salim. Though if you have an embarrassment squick, Miki Mavros (the main character) will hit it.

A couple of pictures, just because.

This is Miki. She wants to be an actress but ends up working in the office of Dr. Joe Mangeshkar to pay bills.

Joe.

Subplot time! (Well, there are a couple, but this is the subplot I care about.)

Layla with her fiance, Sharif. Yes, she has a fiance. No, she's not very happy about that.

Layla with her girlfriend, Jackie. At the beginning of the show they're just dancing around each other, and Jackie doesn't know that Layla has a fiance.

I'm going to spoil because I doubt you care, but at the end of the show Jackie has found out about Sharif and told Layla that she either needs to break it off with Sharif and come out to her family or they won't be able to see each other any longer. Layla does the former but not the latter. They do get back together at the very end.

Vienna Teng - Inland Territory is a CD with some truly remarkable songs on it, and I would really love to see fic for any of them. But then, I do adore fic based off of songs.

Here's one of the songs, as an example of her style and such.

All Your Kayfabe Friends is a Los Campesinos! song.

Lyrics are here. And you can hear it here.

Mostly I nominated it for the line "I seduced your ex-boyfriend, to help you get over him
He found you more attractive, it helped you get over me." Because umm. lolol.

Party Animals is a British tv series. I won't be requesting it this year, not even sure if I'll be singing up to write it, but I want it to be there in case anyone ends up wanting to ask for it or sees it there and thinks 'Ooh, yes. Fic for that would be lovely.'



Comments welcome either here or on Dreamwidth ().

Hi mates:)
Just try New big deep chunz mixed from

• His Majesty The DJ of All Times (by MIXMAG 2010) FATBOY SLIM The Greater,
• WOLFGANG GARTNER (the best Nuskul electro - tehcno producer 2009-2010 SPINNIN REC) ,
• SANDER KLEINENBERG (the Legend of progressive house) ,
• THOMAS GOLD (Breakthrough up to the worldwide scene of tech house 2009-2010 TOOLROOM RECORDS) ,
• JOHN DIGWEED (Guru of progressive and deep, DJMag top DJ #1 2000 and Top #10 1999 - 2010 BEDROCK REC) ,
• GARETH EMERY (Madchester based Trance & Progressive Star, GARUDA RECORDS)
• FERGIE (Breakthrough of techno dance scene 2010 by DJ IBIZA 2010)

...in da mix.   Listen, nJoy:)

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