My Dear Yuletide Writer Letter
Dear Yuletide Writer -
First of all, I love you already. Really - I requested an early silent film, a nineteenth century operetta, and two eighteenth century epistolary novels. Anyone who offered to write for even one of those is someone whose writing I'd like to read.
For all of the fandoms that I've requested I love the source material - I find it intriguing, stimulating; I return to it over and over, looking for new things. What I most want out of a story from you - and I believe I've emphasized this in my requests themselves, but there is no harm in saying it again - is what you see in those source texts. I want new perspectives, new filters, new refractions.
One thing that is rather important to me in anything I read, whether fan fiction or original, is the author's respect of the emotional reality of the situations that she or he writes. All the fandoms that I've requested were created in other eras - they are stylized within the conventions of their world and don't really bear much resemblance to realism as we understand it today. But I ask that you, dearest writer, not take the characters in the canon any less seriously because of that. If characters in a story are not treated as people I get very viscerally and unpleasantly jolted out of a story. I'm comfortable with whatever subject matter you want to deal with in your story, as long as events are given their due weight and characters are allowed to be affected by them. (I think this tends to be a problem with a lot of Dangerous Liaisons adaptations out there - the book's emotional realism is so fragile that adaptors almost invariably end up messing with it - and you know what it's like when that dubious consent Valmont/Cecile scene is played for laughs? Eww.)
Request 1:
Fandom: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Characters: Any
Expressionism is just amazing, isn't it? The film offers such evocative and ambiguous looks on narrative, on identity and on human relationships, and I think that's what fan fiction is great for, taking all that and exploding that. I requested 'any' under characters because, in requesting this film, I didn't have any particular type of story in mind - I just recalled my adoration of this film's imagery, its narrative, its characters, and I thought that I would love to read what another person would do, working with that. Caligari, like so many silent films, is shown, in its proper state, with various colors tinting each scene - give me your colors, please, and let me bask in them.
I really like expressionism and I really, really like silent films. This is probably pretty obvious. With Caligari I love the layering of the narrative and the way that the visual style plays into that - I know a lot of people tend to discount the twist ending because of the version of events in which it was not within the original intention of the scriptwriters, but I think it echoes the overall themes very interestingly, myself, and I don't think that the ending makes the story's morality all that clear-cut. ("Now I know how to cure him" - that always sounded fairly ominous to me!) So, I'm open to a lot of different directions that you could go on this. Cesar really interests me, but I think he really interests everyone, and I love the other characters as well (what was that with Jane calling herself a Queen at the end? What was go on in the minds of any of the versions of Caligari we percieve as real?). Just the idea of fan fiction for this film excites me.
Request 2
Fandom: Choderlos de Laclos - Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Character: Presidente de Tourvel
Madame de Tourvel never is given enough to do by adaptors, being too often locked into her role as the 'good woman', savior of Valmont's soul. I think she's a lot more interesting than that. I think in her there is a mingling of strength and vulnerability which is incredibly intriguing, and an uncertain ambiguity to her awareness of her position in the complex dynamics between the characters. I would love to seen her given the attention and consideration which is her due. I'd like to see her relationship with Valmont portrayed as something beyond the simplistic and cliched, or to see what an interaction between her and the Marquise might be like. Or you could show me what her marriage was like, her life before Valmont, or give me an alternate ending in which she doesn't die, or imagine an interaction between her and Cecile. I am very open to various possibilities.
No, sorry to say, I didn't really like Michelle Pfeiffer's portrayal of this character. Madame de Tourvel...that moment after she's surrendered to Valmont, when she's crying and he says something like "Why are you crying? Do you want to make me unhappy?" and she immediately becomes very calm and tells him, "No, you're right. Now I will dedicate myself entirely to your happiness"...oh, dear gods, I think that's such an incredibly powerful thing. Because the games Valmont and Merteuil play are all about coaxing surrender, about winning it when the victim doesn't quite understand the full implications, and what Tourvel does at that moment - she surrenders deliberately, with this complete and entire awareness of what she is doing. I think that is such a beautiful thing, so honest, and so...so full of autonomy, even when she is at that moment faced with the ruination of all her previous ideals. She's really rather incredible. And I'm not sure why no one seems to see this.
Request 3
Fandom: Les Contes dHoffman (opera)
Character: Any
I think the idea of fan fiction for this opera is just about one of the most fun things ever. All the pairings! The characters who are parts of one another but not quite! The parallels between the acts, refracting one another like bits or mirrors! The possibility of characters from between the acts meeting one another! The way in which the Olympia/Giulietta/Antonia/Stella characters are never quite fully defined, and the same for their respective antagonist/villain characters! All the amazing imagery! Go as wild as your imagination takes you and I promise to go with you.
Yes, all I have with this one is unformed enthusiasm and the glittery beginnings of thematic analysis. And a feeling that the structure of this opera is just so pretty that it makes me want to choreograph on it. Oh, and "Scintille, diamant" is a lot sexier than it has any right to be.
(And in what ways is Olympia's status as an automaton merely a literalization of the ways in which the other manifestations of Stella are created by Hoffman and by their antagonists? What does this tell us about Giulietta, who...do we know what she's thinking? At all? Oh, gods, this opera is fascinating.)
Request 4
Fandom: Samuel Richardson - Clarissa
Character: Clarissa Harlowe
I love Clarissa, the novel and the character. The novel is a mad thing, bizarre, enveloping, but for me what held it all together, kept it one piece, was the character of Clarissa herself, who was remarkably, startlingly real, rich, fascinating. I want to see more of her. I would be happy with a story expanding on a moment within the vast, complicated events of the novel, telling it in a way that the epistolary novel could not, or I would be happy with a story that showed her before the novel, or even one that explored an alternate ending, whether happier or more terrible. If you love this character yourself, if you read this book and saw her as wonderful, then I would love you to show me what you see. I ask only that you allow Lovelace also to be complex and human, even in his monstrosity.
This novel messed with my emotions. A lot. Requesting fan fiction for it feels a little masochistic. But the thought that it might actually be written...it would really be wonderful, writer of mine. One of the things that I love about both historical fiction and fan fiction of texts from other eras is the unique ability that they give us, when done well, to play within the world of other eras while bringing to them the literary innovations of our own eras. With Clarissa, so specifically both of its time and beyond it, its emotional honesty so unflinching brutal, its craftsmanship impeccable...fan fiction could be breathtaking.
One thing, though, really - I love Clarissa Harlowe. I don't think she's a paragon, I don't think she's perfect, I think a lot of the things that Anna Howe refers to as virtues are simply idiosyncratic personality traits, but I love her, and I don't blame her for her fate. I think she was stuck with a personality type, a sense of selfhood that simply could not exist in her era and situation (or perhaps in the world itself, in any era?) and so the world around her went out of its way to destroy her. Please, please don't blame her for her rape. I will go hide under my bed and not come out.
My love to you, writer! I absolutely cannot wait to see what you come up with. I am certain that I will be full of fascination and adoration of it, whatever it is.
- Rachel/Assimbya
First of all, I love you already. Really - I requested an early silent film, a nineteenth century operetta, and two eighteenth century epistolary novels. Anyone who offered to write for even one of those is someone whose writing I'd like to read.
For all of the fandoms that I've requested I love the source material - I find it intriguing, stimulating; I return to it over and over, looking for new things. What I most want out of a story from you - and I believe I've emphasized this in my requests themselves, but there is no harm in saying it again - is what you see in those source texts. I want new perspectives, new filters, new refractions.
One thing that is rather important to me in anything I read, whether fan fiction or original, is the author's respect of the emotional reality of the situations that she or he writes. All the fandoms that I've requested were created in other eras - they are stylized within the conventions of their world and don't really bear much resemblance to realism as we understand it today. But I ask that you, dearest writer, not take the characters in the canon any less seriously because of that. If characters in a story are not treated as people I get very viscerally and unpleasantly jolted out of a story. I'm comfortable with whatever subject matter you want to deal with in your story, as long as events are given their due weight and characters are allowed to be affected by them. (I think this tends to be a problem with a lot of Dangerous Liaisons adaptations out there - the book's emotional realism is so fragile that adaptors almost invariably end up messing with it - and you know what it's like when that dubious consent Valmont/Cecile scene is played for laughs? Eww.)
Request 1:
Fandom: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Characters: Any
Expressionism is just amazing, isn't it? The film offers such evocative and ambiguous looks on narrative, on identity and on human relationships, and I think that's what fan fiction is great for, taking all that and exploding that. I requested 'any' under characters because, in requesting this film, I didn't have any particular type of story in mind - I just recalled my adoration of this film's imagery, its narrative, its characters, and I thought that I would love to read what another person would do, working with that. Caligari, like so many silent films, is shown, in its proper state, with various colors tinting each scene - give me your colors, please, and let me bask in them.
I really like expressionism and I really, really like silent films. This is probably pretty obvious. With Caligari I love the layering of the narrative and the way that the visual style plays into that - I know a lot of people tend to discount the twist ending because of the version of events in which it was not within the original intention of the scriptwriters, but I think it echoes the overall themes very interestingly, myself, and I don't think that the ending makes the story's morality all that clear-cut. ("Now I know how to cure him" - that always sounded fairly ominous to me!) So, I'm open to a lot of different directions that you could go on this. Cesar really interests me, but I think he really interests everyone, and I love the other characters as well (what was that with Jane calling herself a Queen at the end? What was go on in the minds of any of the versions of Caligari we percieve as real?). Just the idea of fan fiction for this film excites me.
Request 2
Fandom: Choderlos de Laclos - Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Character: Presidente de Tourvel
Madame de Tourvel never is given enough to do by adaptors, being too often locked into her role as the 'good woman', savior of Valmont's soul. I think she's a lot more interesting than that. I think in her there is a mingling of strength and vulnerability which is incredibly intriguing, and an uncertain ambiguity to her awareness of her position in the complex dynamics between the characters. I would love to seen her given the attention and consideration which is her due. I'd like to see her relationship with Valmont portrayed as something beyond the simplistic and cliched, or to see what an interaction between her and the Marquise might be like. Or you could show me what her marriage was like, her life before Valmont, or give me an alternate ending in which she doesn't die, or imagine an interaction between her and Cecile. I am very open to various possibilities.
No, sorry to say, I didn't really like Michelle Pfeiffer's portrayal of this character. Madame de Tourvel...that moment after she's surrendered to Valmont, when she's crying and he says something like "Why are you crying? Do you want to make me unhappy?" and she immediately becomes very calm and tells him, "No, you're right. Now I will dedicate myself entirely to your happiness"...oh, dear gods, I think that's such an incredibly powerful thing. Because the games Valmont and Merteuil play are all about coaxing surrender, about winning it when the victim doesn't quite understand the full implications, and what Tourvel does at that moment - she surrenders deliberately, with this complete and entire awareness of what she is doing. I think that is such a beautiful thing, so honest, and so...so full of autonomy, even when she is at that moment faced with the ruination of all her previous ideals. She's really rather incredible. And I'm not sure why no one seems to see this.
Request 3
Fandom: Les Contes dHoffman (opera)
Character: Any
I think the idea of fan fiction for this opera is just about one of the most fun things ever. All the pairings! The characters who are parts of one another but not quite! The parallels between the acts, refracting one another like bits or mirrors! The possibility of characters from between the acts meeting one another! The way in which the Olympia/Giulietta/Antonia/Stella characters are never quite fully defined, and the same for their respective antagonist/villain characters! All the amazing imagery! Go as wild as your imagination takes you and I promise to go with you.
Yes, all I have with this one is unformed enthusiasm and the glittery beginnings of thematic analysis. And a feeling that the structure of this opera is just so pretty that it makes me want to choreograph on it. Oh, and "Scintille, diamant" is a lot sexier than it has any right to be.
(And in what ways is Olympia's status as an automaton merely a literalization of the ways in which the other manifestations of Stella are created by Hoffman and by their antagonists? What does this tell us about Giulietta, who...do we know what she's thinking? At all? Oh, gods, this opera is fascinating.)
Request 4
Fandom: Samuel Richardson - Clarissa
Character: Clarissa Harlowe
I love Clarissa, the novel and the character. The novel is a mad thing, bizarre, enveloping, but for me what held it all together, kept it one piece, was the character of Clarissa herself, who was remarkably, startlingly real, rich, fascinating. I want to see more of her. I would be happy with a story expanding on a moment within the vast, complicated events of the novel, telling it in a way that the epistolary novel could not, or I would be happy with a story that showed her before the novel, or even one that explored an alternate ending, whether happier or more terrible. If you love this character yourself, if you read this book and saw her as wonderful, then I would love you to show me what you see. I ask only that you allow Lovelace also to be complex and human, even in his monstrosity.
This novel messed with my emotions. A lot. Requesting fan fiction for it feels a little masochistic. But the thought that it might actually be written...it would really be wonderful, writer of mine. One of the things that I love about both historical fiction and fan fiction of texts from other eras is the unique ability that they give us, when done well, to play within the world of other eras while bringing to them the literary innovations of our own eras. With Clarissa, so specifically both of its time and beyond it, its emotional honesty so unflinching brutal, its craftsmanship impeccable...fan fiction could be breathtaking.
One thing, though, really - I love Clarissa Harlowe. I don't think she's a paragon, I don't think she's perfect, I think a lot of the things that Anna Howe refers to as virtues are simply idiosyncratic personality traits, but I love her, and I don't blame her for her fate. I think she was stuck with a personality type, a sense of selfhood that simply could not exist in her era and situation (or perhaps in the world itself, in any era?) and so the world around her went out of its way to destroy her. Please, please don't blame her for her rape. I will go hide under my bed and not come out.
My love to you, writer! I absolutely cannot wait to see what you come up with. I am certain that I will be full of fascination and adoration of it, whatever it is.
- Rachel/Assimbya