Yuletide Letter 2012
Dear Yuletide Author,
My fandoms absolutely absurdly obscure this year (with the possible exception of Deathless), and I am so, so worried that no one is even going to offer them, so, whoever you are, I am very grateful for your existence!
Fortunately for you, all my fandoms this year have a more or less similar tone (eerie gothic expressionism) and deal with similar themes (power/authority, intertextuality and storytelling, trauma, healing, memory) and are all relatively quick to get into. "The Scarlet House" is a single short story by Angela Carter, available in the collections Burning Your Boats or A Book of Contemporary Nightmares, Waxworks is a silent film 90 minutes long and available entirely online, and Ariane et Barbe-Bleue is a short opera of which you can easily get a recording from your local library. Deathless, which is by far the best known of all of these (...which is sort of absurd, considering), is a recent novel which should be obtainable from libraries and bookstores. So if you're stuck on whatever you get matched for, any of the other options would be pretty readily available. Actually, if you like one of these texts, you probably should look into the others, because they are wonderful. Really. Really.
I love all these canons to death, so anything that works with their original tone would definitely make me happy, though I know they're all extremely stylized pieces, so if you would like to go in another direction and approach them from a more realistic angle, that would be great too. I'm just so excited at the prospect of getting more in any of these worlds! The other result of these being short, easily assimilated fandoms is that I have been left desperately wanting more.
Things I like include - world-building, backstory, adaptation/variation, myths and fairy tales, incorporating historical details, sensitive and thoughtful depiction of trauma and recovery, LGBT and poly characters, complex interpersonal dynamics (can you tell from my fandoms that I'm interested in power relations?), plot changing AUs (as opposed to setting changing ones, of which I am not so fond).
Things I don't like - modern attitudes in non-modern settings, PWP, sexual or physical violence treated lightly or disrespectfully by the author (characters expressing such views is absolutely fine), victim blaming.
There is some very dark content in all these fandoms, so feel free to take things to whatever places you need to in order to tell your story. I only ask that violence is never treated as a plot device without larger emotional implications.
Finding me online - this journal has been pretty inactive for a while, but you can read a lot of my old (or not so old) stories here if you so choose. I'm on AO3 as Assimbya, same name as here.
Scarlet House - Angela Carter
Characters - Any
What did the narrator not see? What is actually going on with the Count and Madame Shreck? How much is the narrator's perception of events accurate? Who are the other women being held with her? What happens after the end of the story?
I am an unabashed admirer of everything Angela Carter has ever done. While I, like absolutely everyone else, love the stories in The Bloody Chamber, I discovered this, much lesser known late piece of hers and was absolutely fascinated. The intellectual soil from which this and other works of Carter's seem to grow is a place that I am very comfortable, and I would love to see you go in the direction of any of the cultural/literary influences this story draws from - De Sade, German expressionism (Shreck?!), fairy-tale, fantasy/sci-fi dystopia, tarot and occultism...mostly, though, I just want more. "The Scarlet House" can definitely stand alone as an ambiguous and intriguing little work, but I so much want to see the wider world that it fits into, want to see the lives of the characters either before or after the story.
I am fascinated with absolutely all the themes brought up in this story, so I can pretty much promise that any direction you go will be enormously exciting to me. I'm particularly interested in all the instability around memory, truth, and storytelling.
Ariane et Barbe-Bleue - Dukas/Maeterlinck
Character: Any
There are so many unanswered questions in this opera, and I would lovely to hear an exploration of any of them. Hearing about any of Barbe-Bleue's earlier wives would be especially exciting (I'm particularly interested in Alladine, the foreign bride who cannot speak to the other characters). What their lives were like before they married Barbe-Bleue, how they ended up locked up, why they decide to stay with him. Or more about Ariane would also be welcome - what does she do after leaving the castle?
Note: if you're having trouble finding the libretto in English and feel you need it, you might find it easier to look for Maurice Maeterlinck's play of the same title. It's essentially the same as the opera libretto.
Bluebeard adaptations are one of my favorites things, and I think this is one of the most under-appreciated. I love what it does with the story - I love how active Ariane is, her agency and determination (however misplaced). I love the wives being alive, and I am horrified by the image of them curled together in the dark. I love the gorgeous, startling, unprecedented ending. I feel that this play has a real tenderness to it, especially in the interactions between the women, and would love to see it explored.
The wives' choice to stay is a difficult thing, and an issue that I'm particularly sensitive to (I do a lot of volunteer work with survivors of sexual and domestic violence). I would love to see it explored, but I would ask that you not frame it in terms of their weakness or get victim blaming towards them. It might make sense for Ariane herself to express some of those views (and actually, that would be really interesting to read about), but there's a difference between showing her perspective and validating those opinions as an author.
Waxworks (1924)
Characters: Any
Either world-building or character exploration would be fantastic. What are the parallels and connections between the different worlds of the film? Are there any places where the boundaries between them grow weak? If you're looking to do something more focused on one of the individual stories, I would love, love, love to read more about Conrad Veidt's Ivan the Terrible and his mad, ritualistic world.
Silent film is yet another one of the strange things that I'm into, and Waxworks, for all its strangeness and occasional incoherence, captured my heart. A story that explored some of the more existential, world-building questions that the film entirely evades would be amazing - I'm imagining what it could be for some of the characters to pass out of their stories and into other parts of the film, or what it would be like for the young writer's world to become permeated with these strange figures. If you wouldn't like to go that route, a more character-focused piece on Conrad Veidt's Ivan the Terrible would also be very much welcome.
Crossovers with any other German silent film (Nosferatu, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis) would be incredible, but not at all necessary if that's not something you're into.
Deathless - Catherynne M. Valente
Character: Koschei the Deathless
Everything about Deathless made me giddy with joy, so I'll be pretty easy to please here. I would love something that explores some of the pieces of the world that the novel doesn't let us see, or some of the gaps in the narrative. Showing Koschei's earlier life would be interesting (more interactions between the siblings? How Koschei began collecting brides?), or more with Marya - I would love to see more about her earlier days in his kingdom (her passing references to experiences there fascinate me), and about the war that makes her so hard. Also, the section in Leningrad during the war absolutely broke my heart, and anything you wanted to do in the direction would be fantastic.
Koschei in the novel is pretty firmly locked into the 'demon lover' archetype, so I think he has a certain inhuman mystique that disallows us from really seeing him as a person outside of Marya's fantasies. Something from his perspective that sort of demolished that mystique would be interesting, but I would also be happy to read a story that remained in Marya's perspective and gave us more of the tone and dynamic we see in the novel.
...so, that prompt got a little long. I don't have that much more to add. I loved Deathless' way of interacting with the fairy tales it comes from, and I loved all the layering on and correspondences with Soviet history, and I adored everything about Marya and Koschei's relationship and its depiction. In the same vein of some of my comments above - there are some convoluted and interesting things going on here with power, submission, violence, and trauma. I love reading about these topics, but I also ask that they be treated seriously and respectfully.
Again, thank you so much. I am very much looking forward to reading whatever you create.
- Rachel
My fandoms absolutely absurdly obscure this year (with the possible exception of Deathless), and I am so, so worried that no one is even going to offer them, so, whoever you are, I am very grateful for your existence!
Fortunately for you, all my fandoms this year have a more or less similar tone (eerie gothic expressionism) and deal with similar themes (power/authority, intertextuality and storytelling, trauma, healing, memory) and are all relatively quick to get into. "The Scarlet House" is a single short story by Angela Carter, available in the collections Burning Your Boats or A Book of Contemporary Nightmares, Waxworks is a silent film 90 minutes long and available entirely online, and Ariane et Barbe-Bleue is a short opera of which you can easily get a recording from your local library. Deathless, which is by far the best known of all of these (...which is sort of absurd, considering), is a recent novel which should be obtainable from libraries and bookstores. So if you're stuck on whatever you get matched for, any of the other options would be pretty readily available. Actually, if you like one of these texts, you probably should look into the others, because they are wonderful. Really. Really.
I love all these canons to death, so anything that works with their original tone would definitely make me happy, though I know they're all extremely stylized pieces, so if you would like to go in another direction and approach them from a more realistic angle, that would be great too. I'm just so excited at the prospect of getting more in any of these worlds! The other result of these being short, easily assimilated fandoms is that I have been left desperately wanting more.
Things I like include - world-building, backstory, adaptation/variation, myths and fairy tales, incorporating historical details, sensitive and thoughtful depiction of trauma and recovery, LGBT and poly characters, complex interpersonal dynamics (can you tell from my fandoms that I'm interested in power relations?), plot changing AUs (as opposed to setting changing ones, of which I am not so fond).
Things I don't like - modern attitudes in non-modern settings, PWP, sexual or physical violence treated lightly or disrespectfully by the author (characters expressing such views is absolutely fine), victim blaming.
There is some very dark content in all these fandoms, so feel free to take things to whatever places you need to in order to tell your story. I only ask that violence is never treated as a plot device without larger emotional implications.
Finding me online - this journal has been pretty inactive for a while, but you can read a lot of my old (or not so old) stories here if you so choose. I'm on AO3 as Assimbya, same name as here.
Scarlet House - Angela Carter
Characters - Any
What did the narrator not see? What is actually going on with the Count and Madame Shreck? How much is the narrator's perception of events accurate? Who are the other women being held with her? What happens after the end of the story?
I am an unabashed admirer of everything Angela Carter has ever done. While I, like absolutely everyone else, love the stories in The Bloody Chamber, I discovered this, much lesser known late piece of hers and was absolutely fascinated. The intellectual soil from which this and other works of Carter's seem to grow is a place that I am very comfortable, and I would love to see you go in the direction of any of the cultural/literary influences this story draws from - De Sade, German expressionism (Shreck?!), fairy-tale, fantasy/sci-fi dystopia, tarot and occultism...mostly, though, I just want more. "The Scarlet House" can definitely stand alone as an ambiguous and intriguing little work, but I so much want to see the wider world that it fits into, want to see the lives of the characters either before or after the story.
I am fascinated with absolutely all the themes brought up in this story, so I can pretty much promise that any direction you go will be enormously exciting to me. I'm particularly interested in all the instability around memory, truth, and storytelling.
Ariane et Barbe-Bleue - Dukas/Maeterlinck
Character: Any
There are so many unanswered questions in this opera, and I would lovely to hear an exploration of any of them. Hearing about any of Barbe-Bleue's earlier wives would be especially exciting (I'm particularly interested in Alladine, the foreign bride who cannot speak to the other characters). What their lives were like before they married Barbe-Bleue, how they ended up locked up, why they decide to stay with him. Or more about Ariane would also be welcome - what does she do after leaving the castle?
Note: if you're having trouble finding the libretto in English and feel you need it, you might find it easier to look for Maurice Maeterlinck's play of the same title. It's essentially the same as the opera libretto.
Bluebeard adaptations are one of my favorites things, and I think this is one of the most under-appreciated. I love what it does with the story - I love how active Ariane is, her agency and determination (however misplaced). I love the wives being alive, and I am horrified by the image of them curled together in the dark. I love the gorgeous, startling, unprecedented ending. I feel that this play has a real tenderness to it, especially in the interactions between the women, and would love to see it explored.
The wives' choice to stay is a difficult thing, and an issue that I'm particularly sensitive to (I do a lot of volunteer work with survivors of sexual and domestic violence). I would love to see it explored, but I would ask that you not frame it in terms of their weakness or get victim blaming towards them. It might make sense for Ariane herself to express some of those views (and actually, that would be really interesting to read about), but there's a difference between showing her perspective and validating those opinions as an author.
Waxworks (1924)
Characters: Any
Either world-building or character exploration would be fantastic. What are the parallels and connections between the different worlds of the film? Are there any places where the boundaries between them grow weak? If you're looking to do something more focused on one of the individual stories, I would love, love, love to read more about Conrad Veidt's Ivan the Terrible and his mad, ritualistic world.
Silent film is yet another one of the strange things that I'm into, and Waxworks, for all its strangeness and occasional incoherence, captured my heart. A story that explored some of the more existential, world-building questions that the film entirely evades would be amazing - I'm imagining what it could be for some of the characters to pass out of their stories and into other parts of the film, or what it would be like for the young writer's world to become permeated with these strange figures. If you wouldn't like to go that route, a more character-focused piece on Conrad Veidt's Ivan the Terrible would also be very much welcome.
Crossovers with any other German silent film (Nosferatu, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis) would be incredible, but not at all necessary if that's not something you're into.
Deathless - Catherynne M. Valente
Character: Koschei the Deathless
Everything about Deathless made me giddy with joy, so I'll be pretty easy to please here. I would love something that explores some of the pieces of the world that the novel doesn't let us see, or some of the gaps in the narrative. Showing Koschei's earlier life would be interesting (more interactions between the siblings? How Koschei began collecting brides?), or more with Marya - I would love to see more about her earlier days in his kingdom (her passing references to experiences there fascinate me), and about the war that makes her so hard. Also, the section in Leningrad during the war absolutely broke my heart, and anything you wanted to do in the direction would be fantastic.
Koschei in the novel is pretty firmly locked into the 'demon lover' archetype, so I think he has a certain inhuman mystique that disallows us from really seeing him as a person outside of Marya's fantasies. Something from his perspective that sort of demolished that mystique would be interesting, but I would also be happy to read a story that remained in Marya's perspective and gave us more of the tone and dynamic we see in the novel.
...so, that prompt got a little long. I don't have that much more to add. I loved Deathless' way of interacting with the fairy tales it comes from, and I loved all the layering on and correspondences with Soviet history, and I adored everything about Marya and Koschei's relationship and its depiction. In the same vein of some of my comments above - there are some convoluted and interesting things going on here with power, submission, violence, and trauma. I love reading about these topics, but I also ask that they be treated seriously and respectfully.
Again, thank you so much. I am very much looking forward to reading whatever you create.
- Rachel