Dear Yuletide Author letter 2014
Dear Yuletide Author,
Hello!
I find this bit really hard, and for that I must apologise. Yuletide is the only fandom thing I do and so I don’t always think of all the myriad details that people would like to see in a letter to the author. I read the lists of kinks that people like and dislike and half the ideas never even cross my mind, I am so vanilla! I hope I can give you some ideas about stuff that might help you with my prompts.
Most importantly, though - thank you for signing up for one of these fandoms, and thank you in advance for the fic. It’s a lovely gesture which I will appreciate hugely.
Things in general
I basically like fic that takes place in or around canon events. Although I’ll happily write non-canon pairings etc. it’s not what I’m particularly interested in to read. So stuff like specific kinks, non-canon relationships and so forth don’t really cross my mind and aren’t what I’m looking for in The Last Five Years or The Dig, for instance. There’s nothing to suggest that Cathy Hyatt is into hardcore bondage, or Boston Low will ever get pregnant, if you catch my drift… (although I guess Cathy MIGHT be? Maybe? I’m not sure it’s something I’d want to read about, though…)
(this applies much less to Greek Prose Comp, which is obviously a bit more free-reign).
I realise this might sound a bit boring but basically I like the story-based fandoms because of their stories being the way they are, not for imaging characters boning each other that don’t do so in canon. I tend to be a fan of “works as a whole” rather than “specific characters in a work”, and I think my tastes probably reflect this. I hope that makes some kind of sense and isn’t too much of a creativity buzzkill!
The Last Five Years - Jason Robert Brown
Cathy, Jamie
Fandom explanation
The Last Five Years is a small chamber musical for two actors about a five year long relationship between Cathy Hyatt, a jobbing musical theatre actress, and Jamie Wellerstein, the “next big thing” as an author. The show’s gimmick is that Jamie’s story is told in chronological order, but Cathy’s begins when Jamie leaves her and rewinds through time. Each character alternates songs, meeting in the middle at their wedding and a song about sharing their lives for the next few minutes, before continuing on. It’s intensely focused on character and very clever; a theme Cathy sings about how self-absorbed she thinks Jamie is in an early song transforms into her breathless gushing about how obsessed she is with him and wants him all to herself; Jamie, in the original draft of the show, repeats a theme about how he “could be in love with someone like you” to two different women with completely different emotional resonances, etc.
Youtube has the entire show in both its original and its revival cast recordings to listen to; there is a fair amount of dialogue but it’s not crucial to knowing the characters. You can also buy both albums off iTunes if you happen to be interested. It’s probably about 80 minutes worth of material, and the lyrics are easily Google-able; the original album also comes with a reprint of a short story Jamie reads in the show, which is a thinly veiled reference to his relationship with Cathy. I THINK there’s also an archive recording of the original off-Broadway production starring Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz you can watch on Youtube - if not there are a million amdram versions of varying quality.
Why and what?
I first heard the score of The Last Five Years in a run-down Edinburgh flat played on a clunky electronic keyboard and fell in love with it then - not just musically (I am a total JRB fanboy, I flew across an ocean just to see Bridges of Madison County…) but also in terms of its characters. I think there’s a tendency to distil them down to their emotional, rather than lyrical, portrayals. Jamie’s a cheating bastard and Cathy is bitter she doesn’t taste his success; at the same time, Jamie is hugely supportive of Cathy’s successes for many years and Cathy… well, Cathy gets the short stick as she’s mostly characterised by her ambition and her rather vague love for Jamie, but she’s undoubtedly more sympathetic because at least she doesn’t abandon her husband on his birthday… it’s a complex show!
Basically, as I said in my sign-up details, any stories about Cathy and Jamie would be interesting to me, before/after/during the story of the show. I don’t mind if you write separate stories, if there’s novel extracts from something Jamie’s working on, snapshots from a play rehearsal, letters, anything you like - just something that explores both characters, whether they interact directly or not.
Some possible plot ideas of things I would find interesting, but please don’t feel beholden to them:
- career highlights and lowlights
- Jamie at Cathy’s shows at different times in his life
- how did they first meet
- something involving Mitchell/Carol-Anne/Elise?
What I would not be interested in:
- Nothing but sex. I’ve not put “plot what plot” because character interaction is super without some kind of earth-shaking narrative, but I’m not super-interested in them shagging.
- Either character being an irredeemable dick. They were both to blame for the breakup; Cathy is maddeningly possessive, and Jamie cheats. While Jamie is still "the douche" IMO neither of them is a fundamentally terrible person, and I would prefer you didn't demonise either of them.
Also, if you want to know, my favourite bit of the whole score is in Goodbye Until Tomorrow, when Cathy sings “Finally yes!” and the keys cascades up in those triplets while the cello part goes in the opposite direction. An absolute magic moment among many.
The Dig
Brink, Low, Robbins
Fandom explanation
The Dig, created from an idea by Steven Spielberg, is a “point and click” graphic adventure for the PC released in the mid-1990s - one of those computer games where you solve seemingly nonsense puzzles and have very long clever conversations with other people. Created by Lucasarts, probably the best graphic adventure developers of all time, The Dig was notable from their output for being a serious, sweeping sci-fi epic, rather than a wacky comedy story. It follows three astronauts - a soldier, a geologist, and a journalist - stranded on an alien planet after a mission to divert a massive asteroid from striking the Earth transports them there. The alien planet, known as Cocytus, is bereft of any intelligent life, despite the remnants that the team find there, notably of inhuman skeletons and ghostly blue apparitions sending them inscrutable messages. Nothing is as it appears on Cocytus, where even the dead can live again…
The game is notable in my mind for its intelligent, complex characterisation, and its absolutely beautiful artwork. You can buy it on Steam for a pittance, or watch a Let’s Play on Youtube - it’s probably around 7 hours of gaming time.
Why and what?
I love how everyone involved in The Dig is hyper competent and at the top of their game. It invokes similar feelings to The X-Files (one of my favourite TV shows ever) for me in that these are intelligent people discussing and dealing intelligently with something WAY beyond their expertise. And yes, Brink gets addicted to life crystal meth, but in a very clever way. I’m no scientist or polyglot, so I’m not concerned with pinpoint accuracy, but I like that they feel like they know what they’re doing in so many ways. Even Low, the great meathead that he is.
As I mentioned in the sign-up details, the world building is part of the reason The Dig is such a classic in my eyes. The beautiful choices of colour palette in evoking a world that is so barren and yet beautiful; how alien it all manages to feel; the detail built into the religious system, the technology, the transportation etc. etc. I don’t know if you’ve read the novelisation of the game (and it is not necessary by any means, this is game fanfic!) but it’s also very evocative of Cocytus. If you can build any of this “anthropological” (if that’s the right word) detail into your story telling that would be amazing.
In more character orientated issues - I like their friendly banter; I like that none of them will take shit from anyone, despite chain of command issues; I like sane Brink AND crazy Brink; I like the Low/Robbins relationship, in its full cheesy rom-com except with omnipresent danger of death glory; I particularly like Robbins, and how she should really be leading the damn expedition given how multi-talented she is; I like their inquisitive natures. I also like old crumbly aliens…
Possible ideas I would find interesting:
- mission training; how did they get along before heading out to Attila? Or how did they even get picked?
- Anything showing them reacting to something on Cocytus that we didn’t see before
- Obvious one - the aftermath. How does Brink adjust to having gone through the most brutal detox program imaginable? How do any of them adjust to returning to Earth - if they get there at all, given that we have no idea where the Cocytans actually sent them?
Not-so-interesting:
- no reference to anything “alien” at all. Optional details are optional and all that, but the appeal of The Dig to me is very much tied up in the world these characters explore and the sci-fi aspects. Even if it’s just reminiscing about Cocytus that would be fine, but please don’t forget what they’ve been through together or might go through together - it’s a sci-fi story, after all.
- I would be very grateful if you didn’t write a threesome…
I mentioned in the sign-up that a “bonus” for me would be working in material from any of the many “versions” of the game (which had a particularly troubled development period), including the “fourth” landing party member, Toshi Olenko, who was a Japanese businessman (with a very un-Japanese surname…) who died in a pool of acid or was eaten by bats or something like that. This is COMPLETELY OPTIONAL and not the point of the request but any reference you might make would make me smile as I’ve always wondered what his story would be. Again - TOTALLY OPTIONAL AND WILL NOT MAKE OR BREAK A FIC FOR ME IN THIS FANDOM!
Greek Prose Composition - North and Hillard
Any
Fandom explanation
North and Hillard’s Greek Prose Composition is a 100-year old or so textbook for teaching young posh boys at private school how to write in some form of Attic Greek that vaguely approximates Herodotus. Each chapter has an archaic explanation of a grammatical feature such as “Consecutive Clauses” or “The Definite Article”, some fairly uninteresting examples of where they go, and then endless exercises of either sentence work or passage work to be rendered into Ancient Greek. As is often the way with old textbooks relying on limited vocabulary, the sentences are often nonsensical or like nothing anyone would ever say, and the passages frequently need decoding into modern English before you can even hope to translate them.
The book is totally out of copyright and available as a PDF on http://www.textkit.com. Soon you could be able to write things like “The ambassadors, having beseeched the Persian King, went to Issus at daybreak in order that they should join with the cavalry” in Ancient Greek with something approaching confidence!
Why and what?
I laughed when I saw this one; North and Hillard is such an artificially constructed book and I have had enormous fun trying to work out what the hell some of the passages are supposed to mean in modern English with my students.
Writing something in Greek is obviously totally optional, particularly as it would be meaningless to virtually anyone except me and maybe the other four Yuletiders who offered this fandom. If there is anywhere that the stories, sentences, hell even the grammar explanations want to take you, then please be my guest.
Some ideas, some I mentioned in my sign-up post:
- Greek textbook writers against The Man/The Illuminati/Whoever, with North and Hillard teaming up with Wilding and Sidgwick (or even into the future - Jasper Fforde style book hopping, perhaps, with Athenaze and Reading Greek in the mix?)
- Herodotus and Thucydides revolt against the bastardisation of their work
- A meta story in the style of North and Hillard (although I probably won’t get all the jokes…)
Also did you read fadeaccompli’s letter at http://fadeaccompli.dreamwidth.org/108955.html because those are all awesome ideas! I would steal those ideas and make them my own, in true academic fashion! So if you were secretly hoping to get matched up with the other request for Greek Prose Comp fic, then you can write me the fic you would have written for that one and I will be super happy.
Greek Prose Comp fic! Woo!
Hello!
I find this bit really hard, and for that I must apologise. Yuletide is the only fandom thing I do and so I don’t always think of all the myriad details that people would like to see in a letter to the author. I read the lists of kinks that people like and dislike and half the ideas never even cross my mind, I am so vanilla! I hope I can give you some ideas about stuff that might help you with my prompts.
Most importantly, though - thank you for signing up for one of these fandoms, and thank you in advance for the fic. It’s a lovely gesture which I will appreciate hugely.
Things in general
I basically like fic that takes place in or around canon events. Although I’ll happily write non-canon pairings etc. it’s not what I’m particularly interested in to read. So stuff like specific kinks, non-canon relationships and so forth don’t really cross my mind and aren’t what I’m looking for in The Last Five Years or The Dig, for instance. There’s nothing to suggest that Cathy Hyatt is into hardcore bondage, or Boston Low will ever get pregnant, if you catch my drift… (although I guess Cathy MIGHT be? Maybe? I’m not sure it’s something I’d want to read about, though…)
(this applies much less to Greek Prose Comp, which is obviously a bit more free-reign).
I realise this might sound a bit boring but basically I like the story-based fandoms because of their stories being the way they are, not for imaging characters boning each other that don’t do so in canon. I tend to be a fan of “works as a whole” rather than “specific characters in a work”, and I think my tastes probably reflect this. I hope that makes some kind of sense and isn’t too much of a creativity buzzkill!
The Last Five Years - Jason Robert Brown
Cathy, Jamie
Fandom explanation
The Last Five Years is a small chamber musical for two actors about a five year long relationship between Cathy Hyatt, a jobbing musical theatre actress, and Jamie Wellerstein, the “next big thing” as an author. The show’s gimmick is that Jamie’s story is told in chronological order, but Cathy’s begins when Jamie leaves her and rewinds through time. Each character alternates songs, meeting in the middle at their wedding and a song about sharing their lives for the next few minutes, before continuing on. It’s intensely focused on character and very clever; a theme Cathy sings about how self-absorbed she thinks Jamie is in an early song transforms into her breathless gushing about how obsessed she is with him and wants him all to herself; Jamie, in the original draft of the show, repeats a theme about how he “could be in love with someone like you” to two different women with completely different emotional resonances, etc.
Youtube has the entire show in both its original and its revival cast recordings to listen to; there is a fair amount of dialogue but it’s not crucial to knowing the characters. You can also buy both albums off iTunes if you happen to be interested. It’s probably about 80 minutes worth of material, and the lyrics are easily Google-able; the original album also comes with a reprint of a short story Jamie reads in the show, which is a thinly veiled reference to his relationship with Cathy. I THINK there’s also an archive recording of the original off-Broadway production starring Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz you can watch on Youtube - if not there are a million amdram versions of varying quality.
Why and what?
I first heard the score of The Last Five Years in a run-down Edinburgh flat played on a clunky electronic keyboard and fell in love with it then - not just musically (I am a total JRB fanboy, I flew across an ocean just to see Bridges of Madison County…) but also in terms of its characters. I think there’s a tendency to distil them down to their emotional, rather than lyrical, portrayals. Jamie’s a cheating bastard and Cathy is bitter she doesn’t taste his success; at the same time, Jamie is hugely supportive of Cathy’s successes for many years and Cathy… well, Cathy gets the short stick as she’s mostly characterised by her ambition and her rather vague love for Jamie, but she’s undoubtedly more sympathetic because at least she doesn’t abandon her husband on his birthday… it’s a complex show!
Basically, as I said in my sign-up details, any stories about Cathy and Jamie would be interesting to me, before/after/during the story of the show. I don’t mind if you write separate stories, if there’s novel extracts from something Jamie’s working on, snapshots from a play rehearsal, letters, anything you like - just something that explores both characters, whether they interact directly or not.
Some possible plot ideas of things I would find interesting, but please don’t feel beholden to them:
- career highlights and lowlights
- Jamie at Cathy’s shows at different times in his life
- how did they first meet
- something involving Mitchell/Carol-Anne/Elise?
What I would not be interested in:
- Nothing but sex. I’ve not put “plot what plot” because character interaction is super without some kind of earth-shaking narrative, but I’m not super-interested in them shagging.
- Either character being an irredeemable dick. They were both to blame for the breakup; Cathy is maddeningly possessive, and Jamie cheats. While Jamie is still "the douche" IMO neither of them is a fundamentally terrible person, and I would prefer you didn't demonise either of them.
Also, if you want to know, my favourite bit of the whole score is in Goodbye Until Tomorrow, when Cathy sings “Finally yes!” and the keys cascades up in those triplets while the cello part goes in the opposite direction. An absolute magic moment among many.
The Dig
Brink, Low, Robbins
Fandom explanation
The Dig, created from an idea by Steven Spielberg, is a “point and click” graphic adventure for the PC released in the mid-1990s - one of those computer games where you solve seemingly nonsense puzzles and have very long clever conversations with other people. Created by Lucasarts, probably the best graphic adventure developers of all time, The Dig was notable from their output for being a serious, sweeping sci-fi epic, rather than a wacky comedy story. It follows three astronauts - a soldier, a geologist, and a journalist - stranded on an alien planet after a mission to divert a massive asteroid from striking the Earth transports them there. The alien planet, known as Cocytus, is bereft of any intelligent life, despite the remnants that the team find there, notably of inhuman skeletons and ghostly blue apparitions sending them inscrutable messages. Nothing is as it appears on Cocytus, where even the dead can live again…
The game is notable in my mind for its intelligent, complex characterisation, and its absolutely beautiful artwork. You can buy it on Steam for a pittance, or watch a Let’s Play on Youtube - it’s probably around 7 hours of gaming time.
Why and what?
I love how everyone involved in The Dig is hyper competent and at the top of their game. It invokes similar feelings to The X-Files (one of my favourite TV shows ever) for me in that these are intelligent people discussing and dealing intelligently with something WAY beyond their expertise. And yes, Brink gets addicted to life crystal meth, but in a very clever way. I’m no scientist or polyglot, so I’m not concerned with pinpoint accuracy, but I like that they feel like they know what they’re doing in so many ways. Even Low, the great meathead that he is.
As I mentioned in the sign-up details, the world building is part of the reason The Dig is such a classic in my eyes. The beautiful choices of colour palette in evoking a world that is so barren and yet beautiful; how alien it all manages to feel; the detail built into the religious system, the technology, the transportation etc. etc. I don’t know if you’ve read the novelisation of the game (and it is not necessary by any means, this is game fanfic!) but it’s also very evocative of Cocytus. If you can build any of this “anthropological” (if that’s the right word) detail into your story telling that would be amazing.
In more character orientated issues - I like their friendly banter; I like that none of them will take shit from anyone, despite chain of command issues; I like sane Brink AND crazy Brink; I like the Low/Robbins relationship, in its full cheesy rom-com except with omnipresent danger of death glory; I particularly like Robbins, and how she should really be leading the damn expedition given how multi-talented she is; I like their inquisitive natures. I also like old crumbly aliens…
Possible ideas I would find interesting:
- mission training; how did they get along before heading out to Attila? Or how did they even get picked?
- Anything showing them reacting to something on Cocytus that we didn’t see before
- Obvious one - the aftermath. How does Brink adjust to having gone through the most brutal detox program imaginable? How do any of them adjust to returning to Earth - if they get there at all, given that we have no idea where the Cocytans actually sent them?
Not-so-interesting:
- no reference to anything “alien” at all. Optional details are optional and all that, but the appeal of The Dig to me is very much tied up in the world these characters explore and the sci-fi aspects. Even if it’s just reminiscing about Cocytus that would be fine, but please don’t forget what they’ve been through together or might go through together - it’s a sci-fi story, after all.
- I would be very grateful if you didn’t write a threesome…
I mentioned in the sign-up that a “bonus” for me would be working in material from any of the many “versions” of the game (which had a particularly troubled development period), including the “fourth” landing party member, Toshi Olenko, who was a Japanese businessman (with a very un-Japanese surname…) who died in a pool of acid or was eaten by bats or something like that. This is COMPLETELY OPTIONAL and not the point of the request but any reference you might make would make me smile as I’ve always wondered what his story would be. Again - TOTALLY OPTIONAL AND WILL NOT MAKE OR BREAK A FIC FOR ME IN THIS FANDOM!
Greek Prose Composition - North and Hillard
Any
Fandom explanation
North and Hillard’s Greek Prose Composition is a 100-year old or so textbook for teaching young posh boys at private school how to write in some form of Attic Greek that vaguely approximates Herodotus. Each chapter has an archaic explanation of a grammatical feature such as “Consecutive Clauses” or “The Definite Article”, some fairly uninteresting examples of where they go, and then endless exercises of either sentence work or passage work to be rendered into Ancient Greek. As is often the way with old textbooks relying on limited vocabulary, the sentences are often nonsensical or like nothing anyone would ever say, and the passages frequently need decoding into modern English before you can even hope to translate them.
The book is totally out of copyright and available as a PDF on http://www.textkit.com. Soon you could be able to write things like “The ambassadors, having beseeched the Persian King, went to Issus at daybreak in order that they should join with the cavalry” in Ancient Greek with something approaching confidence!
Why and what?
I laughed when I saw this one; North and Hillard is such an artificially constructed book and I have had enormous fun trying to work out what the hell some of the passages are supposed to mean in modern English with my students.
Writing something in Greek is obviously totally optional, particularly as it would be meaningless to virtually anyone except me and maybe the other four Yuletiders who offered this fandom. If there is anywhere that the stories, sentences, hell even the grammar explanations want to take you, then please be my guest.
Some ideas, some I mentioned in my sign-up post:
- Greek textbook writers against The Man/The Illuminati/Whoever, with North and Hillard teaming up with Wilding and Sidgwick (or even into the future - Jasper Fforde style book hopping, perhaps, with Athenaze and Reading Greek in the mix?)
- Herodotus and Thucydides revolt against the bastardisation of their work
- A meta story in the style of North and Hillard (although I probably won’t get all the jokes…)
Also did you read fadeaccompli’s letter at http://fadeaccompli.dreamwidth.org/108955.html because those are all awesome ideas! I would steal those ideas and make them my own, in true academic fashion! So if you were secretly hoping to get matched up with the other request for Greek Prose Comp fic, then you can write me the fic you would have written for that one and I will be super happy.
Greek Prose Comp fic! Woo!