holiday wishlist meme

Step One

Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered...whatever you're comfortable with) to your LJ. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fun ("I'd love a Snape/Hermione icon that's just for me") to medium ("I wish for _____ on DVD") to really big ("All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.") The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.

If you wish for real possible things, make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it's your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.

Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ, or link to this post so that the holiday joy will spread.


Step Two

Surf around your friendslist (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here's the important part:

If you see a wish you can grant, and it's in your heart to do so, make someone's wish come true. Sometimes someone's trash is another's treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don't want or a gift certificate you won't use--or even know where you could get someone's dream purebred Basset Hound for free--do it. Once a wish has been granted, it will be crossed off my list.

You needn't spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn't to put people out, it's to provide everyone a chance to be someone else's holiday elf--to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not--it's your call.

There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just...wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you'll have the joy of knowing you made someone's holiday special.

( my wishes, which are a bit bizarre-o land, are below; please post a link to your wish posts in comments )

I'm going to Bristol!

I've been making a lot of noise about Bristol, but today I can finally say my abstract has been accepted to the conference, Desiring the Text, Touching the Past: Towards An Erotics of Reception.

( abstract on fan communities mourning fictional characters, with a heavy dose of Torchwood, Harry Potter and Firefly, below )

That I'm getting to do this means a lot to me. Mourning as a lens through which to view the world, fictional and not, is this weird thing that's always been intrinsic to my nature. When this CFP came up right around the same time I was being utterly taken with/touched/fascinated by the Mermaid Quay display for Ianto Jones, this thing just sprung into my head, and all the preliminary research I did made it just stronger and more specific and fascinating and weird than anything I could have imagined.

To get to do something like this as an independent scholar without an advanced degree (I'm on a panel with three professors and my paper is paired with something related to Augustine (and thank god, I have more of a background in that than I should)) is huge. To get to do something like this about stuff I love, (and about characters I've mourned; 2009 has been a weird year) and at a conference that notes (in a manner that implicitly smacks down the notion than fannishness is weakness or sin) in the CFP that "many classical and medieval authors recount embodied and highly emotional encounters with religious, fictional or historical characters," is something I don't even really know how to emotionally react to yet.

But I wanted this like mad, and now have a lot of hard work ahead of me. This is the beginning of something awesome and something I deserve, and oh shit, now this means I'm going to England twice next year!

Some of you may be hearing from me with some requests for favors, or warning that I want to cite one of your fics (actually, I think there's just one of you I have to email about that). I also have to begin the great death fetishization re-watch/re-read of all this stuff (mmmm, science-y). Meanwhile, and this isn't even a joke -- this shit is fraught for me for I hope obvious reasons -- what do I wear?