Dear Yuletide Writer Letter 2016

[thegirlwiththemouseyhair]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First things first: thanks so much for signing up and being willing to write for me! I really appreciate the thought of getting a story and your efforts; I’m sure I will love your creation.

Second, if you have a story you’re just burning to write in any of these obscure canons, go ahead! I am sure it will be good and inspired, and I don’t want to cramp your style. However, if you want to get a sense of what I like and/or some prompts, then I hope the following will be helpful.

General Likes

• I love character driven pieces with complicated, nuanced, passionate relationships that mix angst and happiness. Characters + relationships are what I go to fan fiction for.
• I love interesting interplays between characters who are very different and come together in said complicated relationships, and have a chance of working well together or being terrible for one another. Age gaps and power differentials are really fascinating too - basically things that make you put the characters and their relationships in the spotlight and under scrutiny.
• I love slash, but I realize there are a lot of fascinating heterosexual pairings or gen relationships possible in these canons and would be totally interested to read those, too.
• AU’s! I love AU’s that adapt some of the canon and its drama and problems into a different setting. I feel like in all these canons there are some core elements that I wouldn’t want to do without, either in the plot or relationships or both, but seeing how those essential elements of a work would play out in a different context is just fascinating. I’ll try to point out some of those “essential elements” under specific fandoms so you can better see what I mean.

General Dislikes

• Anything squicky - mpreg, bodily fluids, …. Yeah, I’m pretty vanilla. The only kinky thing I’m really OK with is slight BDSM in sex/hard sex.
• I’m also not usually that big on paragraphs and paragraphs of smut; I find lengthy sex scenes can become really mechanical and I get uncomfortable with that.
• No detailed descriptions of non-con, child abuse, animal abuse, or graphic violence/torture.
• Incest is tricky - it comes up canonically in a couple of the fandoms below, but I am skeptical that "healthy, consensual" incest is a thing. I realize that's a legal/philosophical debate where a case can be made on both sides and where my position might be wrong, but I still prefer not to read about it as a romanticized or positive thing. Something unhealthy or a tragic accident or whatever is more believable in the canons below where it comes up, and I still prefer not to think about graphic incestuous sex, thanks.

Velvet Goldmine

• This movie means a ton to me and I ask for it every Yuletide.
• The ship I personally sail is Curt/Arthur. I really think they exemplify that contrast/balance thing that I love in shipping, and there’s so much scope for either angst or happiness, either post-movie or AUs/whatever when Arthur is younger. (Arthur's groupie days are awesome and could always use more exploring, which is why I nominated Malcolm from the Flaming Creatures in case you want/need to use him too.) Curt and Arthur have some really interesting contrasts between them, and Curt being this rock star idol to Arthur’s ordinary fan creates a power dynamic that you really don’t see everyday in media and that I love seeing explored.
• Speaking of the power dynamic if you write Curt/Arthur - that’s something that I see as absolutely essential to the ship/characters. I think this fandom would do well with more AU’s/fusions with other canons that still somehow keep that “unhappy celebrity”/“unknown, adoring fan dynamic” - like updating the setting to deal with a slightly later music period with Arthur discovering Brian’s (and Curt’s) story and blogging about it? Fusion/crossover with the Life on Mars TV show if you’re into multiple fandoms set in the ‘70s and all named after Bowie songs? Hunger Games fusion with Curt as the substance-abusing mentor or something? Go wild (no pun intended); the fandom could use it, I think.
• This is probably the only fandom on this list where I’m OK with stories that would be heavy on sex, as the movie is very much about sexuality.

Goblin Market

• This is such a beautiful poem, and I love how empowering it is for young women. As I’ve gotten older and started thinking about maybe having kids (i.e., maybe a daughter) someday, its themes of important bonds between women and standing up to exploitation have only become more resonant with me. I have often recited the section beginning with “White and golden Lizzie stood” to myself when I had to stand up to people, and thought of the last few lines when thinking about important women role models in my life, so this is a really, really important work for me.
• The worldbuilding in the poem is fascinating - the juxtaposition of this romanticized country life (where it seems Lizzie and Laura live in a world that’s just the two of them, no parents, no men, no neighbours of any kind or so it seems) with these really creepy goblin creatures. That’s always worth exploring although if you want to try translating the poem and its themes into an AU setting that would also be awesome.
• This is a small detail, but I love that Lizzie feels comforted by the silver penny in her purse - a sign of human civilization and progress in the face of supernatural and superstitious adversity? In real life I’m a secular humanist and a skeptic, and I love fiction that uses supernatural characters or tropes to explore those sorts of themes. I’ve also done some academic work on women, feminism, and technology and feel like a modern AU of this poem could probably use technology/modernity as tools of the girls’ empowerment (or of women’s oppression or both), and you could even consider Lizzie’s Victorian silver penny to be a talisman and sign of modernity in the original. I’m not sure where you could run with these ideas, or if this even makes sense, but consider it food for thought. 
• Not comfortable with incest here; it's a strict DNW for this one. Not trying to kink shame anyone who's gone that route, and I know the poem uses some very sexually charged language, but not for me, please.

The Secret History

• I recently reread this book and reminded myself how much I love it.
• It’s such a tragedy, in part because I really think the main characters had much less to do with the farmer’s death than they thought and would have had much less need to fear Bunny’s blackmail if they weren’t so damn isolated (Julian’s doing?), so damn ignorant of contemporary reality, and so damn inclined to already think they were guilty of horrible crimes, a mental state which I think must have pre-existed the disastrous Bacchanal. (I wrote up a long post about this here: http://thegirlwiththemouseyhair.dreamwidth.org/336652.html#cutid1).
• On the flip side, the highly academic and classically influenced culture and “religion” the classics set insist on living seems attractive in the book and would be fascinating to explore, especially before everything went to hell in a handbasket (though I assume there was plenty of darkness and dysfunction even then).
• This is probably the only fandom where I’d be comfortable reading a bit about incest since it’s canon and not exactly romanticized/sexualized.
• AU’s addressing a similar and tragic situation but in a different context would be fantastic.
• Honestly, I know I asked for specific characters, but I think of them more as the classics set, which is the group/dynamic I'm interested in, as I say in my sign up. If you need to bring in any of the other nominated characters, or discuss how other students perceive them, it's all good too.
• Of the 'classics set', Francis is the one I consider to be the most sympathetic of an unsympathetic lot, so something about him and his perspective/tragedies/angst (or maybe a point in his life that's less bleak?) would be much appreciated.

Arthurian Mythology

• I have loved Arthuriana for almost as long as I can remember. I love the idea of an idealistic King Arthur who was raised in obscurity fighting to make Britain better.
• My interest in Arthuriana inspired me to read quite a bit about Roman and post-Roman/Dark Age Britain when I was younger. I’m therefore most attracted to historically plausible-ish post-Roman British settings of warring Celtic tribes and Anglo-Saxon invasions, complete with religious upheaval/competition and syncretism. You can fake the historical setting til you make it, but I really appreciate works that at least try to make the Arthurian legends work against the backdrop of the period when he might actually have existed (rather than the later medieval setting some works use).
• I also love the potential for exploring the women characters in this mythos, though I don’t like the Lancelot/Guenever/Arthur love triangle because it’s just been done to death. How do ladies like Morgan and Guenever and Nimue cope and assert themselves in this chaotic world? Where does their influence extend? Do women have a place to lose in government, war, religion, magic? (I love the idea of magic/superstition in this setting, so if someone wants to add in Merlin as an accessory to Nimue’s role, that’d be awesome even if he’s not officially in the tag set this year.)
• Finally, AU’s! Modern reincarnation AU’s with urban fantasy type magic and Nimue as Merlin’s badass grad student or something, AU’s set in other more recent periods, like a Victorian drawing room drama or political thriller? Or the far future, like fighting the Hunger Games-esque dystopia… Go nuts! After all, King Arthur is supposed to return when he is most needed and you can’t have King Arthur’s story without the important women behind or around the throne.

If you've any questions or whatever, feel free to send me an anon on Tumblr (the-girl-with-the-mousey-hair) or contact me through the Yuletide mods.