DEAR YULETIDE AUTHOR:
Oct. 30th, 2012 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gogollescentThank you so much for writing for me! This will be my first year actively participating in Yuletide, and I am pretty dang excited to read what you make. This letter is more me trying to pre-emptively hitch a ride on your brainstorming process than anything else: anything I say in it you can feel free to ignore, if it does not jive with your ideas and ficcing desires.
I'm![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
demagogol on tumblr, should you desire a more complete portrait of my tastes than this spanking new blog will provide you with, although actually my tumblr is less a portrait of my tastes than a portrait of a young woman untimely sacrificed to the homestuck altar, so go forth with latex gloves at ready. I like a lot of things. I like humor and tragedy and character pieces, and I am totally down for porn, whether it be anthropomorphic cats going at it in an alley or, uh… anything that's not anthropomorphic cats going at it in an alley. I like AUs, too, in whatever degree of remove or detail you care to make them.
What else? I don't have any triggers; probably the only thing I would ask is that you not, if you can avoid it, write a story that centers around a character being deeply embarrassed or humiliated. Unless it's a character like Mordecai, for whom embarrassed vexation is probably baseline.
And on that note, to the fandoms!
1. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
Request: Anything. Oh god, anything. I will throw out some ideas in my letter because I like seeing other people's prompts and maybe you do too but so help me I just want Wolf Hall fanfiction, really bad, it is a fiery need
PRETTY MUCH no, I'm sorry, let me try to be more helpful. This is like the one canon for which I am less interested in the protagonist's backstory than in their present circumstances, although if you wanted to write about, say, the early days of Cromwell and the cardinal, I'd be so, so cool with that. So cool that my fiery need would spontaneously turn into ice flames. Also: Cromwell and Anne! Scheming. Cromwell and his vengeance, so long-delayed. Cromwell and any of Anne's retinue too, holy shit, I could read a million stories about Cromwell gossipping with various Janes. I also feel like this canon (or, okay, history) would make for some amazing AUs and crossovers, but I am not going to trip too far down that road for fear of waking up tomorrow and finding that I've written a three thousand word precis of "How Thomas Cromwell Accidentally Married Cersei Twice And Caused An Industrial Revolution To Sweep Through Westeros" which would not be to the purpose of this exercise.
There, I hope that cleared things up.
2. Luther (BBC)
Request: I would really love fic exploring Luther's life pre-series, from his marriage to his friendship with Reed to his trust in Teller. Or, heck, if you want to go earlier-- show me the Luther who could have been a different man if he'd read a different book, in all his volatile glory.
(alternatively write me any kind of ripley/luther at all and i will have to go and lie down for a while out of hopeless gratitude)
Notice how I subtly lost all control of capitalization and punctuation in that last bit. No, uh, but really, I am fascinated by the dynamic the show creates between Luther and Reed, which is such a close and unprepossessing friendship for the first four episodes and then sort of goes nova in the worst possible way for the season finale. Then, too, we know that the Luthers and Teller and Reed have known each other for years, they are bound up in each other in a way that the cast of season 2, for example, simply is not, and yet when everything goes to hell it really goes to hell. We never even see Teller's reaction to Luther's innocence, and Luther's despair, in the aftermath, is largely opaque to the viewer-- if the first season opened with an uneasy air of incomplete fresh starts, then the second follows that with the bleakness of a real resurrection, when everything else has been obliterated. And there's a lot we don't know about all the memories that have been swept aside, by death or pain. BUT I WANT TO KNOW. I want to know the shape of what Luther is left to grieve for.
3. Oxford Time Travel Universe (Connie Willis)
Request: As might be evident from my choice of characters, I am really interested in the Doomsday Book, and it would be awesome to see the survivors picking up the pieces of themselves in the immediate aftermath. Kivrin and Dunworthy's relationship is grossly dear to my heart, of course, but anything you want to do with secondary figures from the book would be great too: Badri's self-recriminations and Lupe Montoya's ruined dig, William Gaddson's extremely abortive interest in Kivrin-- I will eat that shit up with a spoon.
This fandom is probably the one I'm most fixated on at the moment, which is saying something because I am frankly enamored of every single thing I requested. But. Yeah. I love The Doomsday Book. I had a seriously difficult time with the part where The Doomsday Book had to come to, like, an end. That seemed pretty unreasonable.
And on that general theme, some more ideas!
4. Lackadaisy
Request: Literally anything pre-comic is going to delight me: heck, anything during-comic too, though I think it's a little harder to wedge stuff in there with the kind of tight plotting that Tracy does. I am probably a little less interested in, say, the murder adventures of Viktor and Mordecai than I am in a broader ensemble piece touching on all the complicated lines of loyalty that made up Lackadaisy's central infrastructure before it collapsed, but I am not about to object to murder adventures either.
I really love Mitzi May. Is that a useful observation? Possibly not. Unfortunately for you the only thing I can think of to say here is that Mitzi is great, and Mitzi's relationships with Zib, Wick, Atlas, Mordecai-- they interest me enormously. Rampant speculation on the subject is about my métier. If it's also yours, great! If not, go with whatever is and I will gorge on it with glee, I adore this comic and every cast member in it. My one other note is that I think more Lackadaisy fanfiction should feature the characters as trufax anthropomorphic cats; but please don't feel obliged to adopt the gag if you find it cumbersome or excessively silly in practice.
And that's it, I think. Thank you again! I look forward to sticking my eyes to your story.
I'm
What else? I don't have any triggers; probably the only thing I would ask is that you not, if you can avoid it, write a story that centers around a character being deeply embarrassed or humiliated. Unless it's a character like Mordecai, for whom embarrassed vexation is probably baseline.
And on that note, to the fandoms!
1. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
Request: Anything. Oh god, anything. I will throw out some ideas in my letter because I like seeing other people's prompts and maybe you do too but so help me I just want Wolf Hall fanfiction, really bad, it is a fiery need
PRETTY MUCH no, I'm sorry, let me try to be more helpful. This is like the one canon for which I am less interested in the protagonist's backstory than in their present circumstances, although if you wanted to write about, say, the early days of Cromwell and the cardinal, I'd be so, so cool with that. So cool that my fiery need would spontaneously turn into ice flames. Also: Cromwell and Anne! Scheming. Cromwell and his vengeance, so long-delayed. Cromwell and any of Anne's retinue too, holy shit, I could read a million stories about Cromwell gossipping with various Janes. I also feel like this canon (or, okay, history) would make for some amazing AUs and crossovers, but I am not going to trip too far down that road for fear of waking up tomorrow and finding that I've written a three thousand word precis of "How Thomas Cromwell Accidentally Married Cersei Twice And Caused An Industrial Revolution To Sweep Through Westeros" which would not be to the purpose of this exercise.
There, I hope that cleared things up.
2. Luther (BBC)
Request: I would really love fic exploring Luther's life pre-series, from his marriage to his friendship with Reed to his trust in Teller. Or, heck, if you want to go earlier-- show me the Luther who could have been a different man if he'd read a different book, in all his volatile glory.
(alternatively write me any kind of ripley/luther at all and i will have to go and lie down for a while out of hopeless gratitude)
Notice how I subtly lost all control of capitalization and punctuation in that last bit. No, uh, but really, I am fascinated by the dynamic the show creates between Luther and Reed, which is such a close and unprepossessing friendship for the first four episodes and then sort of goes nova in the worst possible way for the season finale. Then, too, we know that the Luthers and Teller and Reed have known each other for years, they are bound up in each other in a way that the cast of season 2, for example, simply is not, and yet when everything goes to hell it really goes to hell. We never even see Teller's reaction to Luther's innocence, and Luther's despair, in the aftermath, is largely opaque to the viewer-- if the first season opened with an uneasy air of incomplete fresh starts, then the second follows that with the bleakness of a real resurrection, when everything else has been obliterated. And there's a lot we don't know about all the memories that have been swept aside, by death or pain. BUT I WANT TO KNOW. I want to know the shape of what Luther is left to grieve for.
3. Oxford Time Travel Universe (Connie Willis)
Request: As might be evident from my choice of characters, I am really interested in the Doomsday Book, and it would be awesome to see the survivors picking up the pieces of themselves in the immediate aftermath. Kivrin and Dunworthy's relationship is grossly dear to my heart, of course, but anything you want to do with secondary figures from the book would be great too: Badri's self-recriminations and Lupe Montoya's ruined dig, William Gaddson's extremely abortive interest in Kivrin-- I will eat that shit up with a spoon.
This fandom is probably the one I'm most fixated on at the moment, which is saying something because I am frankly enamored of every single thing I requested. But. Yeah. I love The Doomsday Book. I had a seriously difficult time with the part where The Doomsday Book had to come to, like, an end. That seemed pretty unreasonable.
And on that general theme, some more ideas!
- Outsider-POV on Kivrin and Dunworthy: could be anyone from Colin to Montoya, but I'm just interested in what their morass of parental surrogatehood and betrayal looks like to somebody who doesn't have the benefit of a bunch of religious metaphors in the narration to help them sort out the threads.
- Lupe Montoya, sorting through wrist bones for Kivrin's corder, or listening to the contents of said corder after. Uh, I guess that ties into the last one, but I'm just really pleased by how the book takes Dunworthy's assumptions about his fellow academics and kind of dismantles them in the most painful way possible, so… yeah.
- Dunworthy and Kivrin visit the Valley of Kings. Alternatively: anything with Mary Ahrens. Her past, or even her future-- an AU where she survives and Dunworthy doesn't?
- A story that plays with or attempts to make sense of Fire Watch's inconsistencies vis-à-vis the rest of the series could be devastating. What is the Doomsday Book like in the universe where the history department has an established tradition of sending historians into dangerous, terrible circumstances, giving them memory chips and PTSD, and calling it character building? Where Dunworthy deliberately sends Kivrin to the time of the Black Death because she has a natural immunity? Or in the other direction-- how much less calm and beatific is Kivrin's reaction if her roommate's dangerous assignment to St. Paul's is not a planned rite of passage but the result of bureaucratic incompetence? I just really like Fire Watch okay
- Dunworthy and Kivrin's reunion post All Clear.
4. Lackadaisy
Request: Literally anything pre-comic is going to delight me: heck, anything during-comic too, though I think it's a little harder to wedge stuff in there with the kind of tight plotting that Tracy does. I am probably a little less interested in, say, the murder adventures of Viktor and Mordecai than I am in a broader ensemble piece touching on all the complicated lines of loyalty that made up Lackadaisy's central infrastructure before it collapsed, but I am not about to object to murder adventures either.
I really love Mitzi May. Is that a useful observation? Possibly not. Unfortunately for you the only thing I can think of to say here is that Mitzi is great, and Mitzi's relationships with Zib, Wick, Atlas, Mordecai-- they interest me enormously. Rampant speculation on the subject is about my métier. If it's also yours, great! If not, go with whatever is and I will gorge on it with glee, I adore this comic and every cast member in it. My one other note is that I think more Lackadaisy fanfiction should feature the characters as trufax anthropomorphic cats; but please don't feel obliged to adopt the gag if you find it cumbersome or excessively silly in practice.
And that's it, I think. Thank you again! I look forward to sticking my eyes to your story.
