Dear Yuletide Writer
Dear Yuletide Writer:
Hello! Thank you for the story you're about to write me. I'm extremely fond of all of the things that I've asked for and if you've offered them, you probably are too and that makes me very happy, because I like when people like the things that I like.
Before getting to the fandoms themselves, I always think it's good to cover general likes and dislikes so that no one gets any terrible surprises later on.
Things I like include: friends to lovers, porn, reluctant allies, hurt/comfort, emotional codependence, baby/kid fic, character development, banter, road trips, "oh no, [they're] hot," fake dating, casual touching, all touching, intimacy of all kinds. There are probably more, but that is a relatively representative list.
Things I don't like include: non-con, character bashing. That's pretty much it.
Now, as for the fandoms themselves, I tried to give at least a couple sentences on each of them on my sign up. But, uh, I have more to say about almost all of them. And explanatory quotes. Or gifs. Or pictures of hugs. Or just me rambling, there's going to be a lot of that. I hope that it's helpful in some way.
National Football League RPF - Andrew Luck
Request: I would like fic about Andrew Luck and his ping pong playing robot best friend.
This is not a Yuletide request that I ever expected to make. I'm an NFL fan, but I'm not especially into RPF about the players. I'm a Packers fan, not an Indianapolis fan. And above all else, as a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and a Russell Wilson partisan, I am not an Andrew Luck fan.
Well. I suppose it's more accurate to say I wasn't an Andrew Luck fan. Because that is definitely changing, and it's in no small part due to an episode of The Ringer's NFL podcast, where he talked about his book club and revealed his desire to have a robot to play ping pong with.
I don't even know why I love the idea of it so much, besides the utter charm of it. He's rich. He's successful. He's not unattractive. He could have most anything he wants with a snap of his fingers. And what he wants to buy when he gets his big contract is a robot because sometimes he can't find people who want to hang when he wants to play ping pong.
IT'S SO RIDICULOUSLY ENDEARING.
So I would like fic about this. I'm not opposed to a scenario where the robot falls in love, but mostly I just want their adventures together playing a silly sport. Maybe they listen to audiobooks for the Andrew Luck book club together. Maybe the robot offers beard grooming advice. I don't know their lives.
But yeah. Andrew Luck and his ping pong playing robot BFF. Make it happen.
The Reluctant Widow - Edward Carlyon, Elinor Rochdale
Request: Courtship! Please give me all the courtship.
This is a repeat of my 2015 request for which I received an absolutely lovely Yuletide treat, but I just love this book so much and I want more.
'Then-My Lord, I do not know what scheme you may have in your head, but-'
'I hope you will think better of this determination to seek another post as governess.'
'Well, I shall not, I assure you, sir! I told you once before that I would not become your pensioner, and I beg of you to believe that I meant it!'
'I hope that you will become my wife,' he replied, with all his usual calm.
She was stricken to silence, and was aware of nothing but the hammering of her heart in her chest.
He continued after a moment. 'I should not be making such a declaration to you yet, but I think my sentiments cannot be unknown to you.'
'Quite-quite unknown, my lord!' she said, in a voice which did not seem to be her own.
'I have tried to conceal them. It is too soon, and I would not upon an account embarrass you. But when the period of your strict mourning is over it is my very ardent desire to be permitted to pay my addresses to you.'
There's more, but that gets to the heart of it. GIVE ME COURTING OR GIVE ME DEATH.
There's just so much potential here. Ned trying to woo Elinor under the incredibly amused gaze of his sister, while Elinor is like, "dude, I already agreed to marry you, can we get to that part please." But he promised and running away to Gretna Green is just not the done thing, you know. If you want to mimic the gothic mystery tone of the book, that's cool, but I don't need it. I just need the courting. Because I do.
The President's Daughter - Steven Powers, Neal Powers
Request: I'd like a story about Steven and Neal coping with the events of the books as they happen (so Meg's kidnapping, the assassination attempt, the fracturing of the Powers family, etc.) or a look at who they might become in the future.
So I realize that the title of the series is The President's Daughter and as such, it might seem a little strange to want fic about the sons instead. I got a perfect Yuletide gift about Meg (and Preston) in my second Yuletide, though, and while I am totally on board with including both of them in this story, I feel like asking for anything else on that front would make me greedy. But I've been thinking about these books a lot lately, given what's been going on in the US politically, and it felt like I needed to revisit these characters.
We only ever see Steven and Neal through Meg's eyes, but there always seems to be so much else going on with them. The events of the books hit both boys hard, especially Steven, and we get such a limited look at how they cope. Neal agrees to therapy, Steven agrees only in the context of sports psychology. Neal was absolutely certain Meg was coming home, Steven, I feel okay assuming was less certain and also likes the outcome less. There's also that Neal and Seven have their own relationship that we don't see ("Neal notices everything, he only pretends not to so his stomach doesn't hurt"), and I can only imagine that as their family suffers and as Meg moves away, that relationship gets closer.
But if the era of the books doesn't interest you, what about what comes after? Does Neal go to West Point after all? Does Steven run as far as he can from the White House and politics and actually become a baseball player? How do he and Meg rebuild their closer relationship from the earlier books, because I really want to believe that happens. What do the Powers siblings look like ten years after their mom is out of the White House?
I'd just like to see how a pair of boys who were, to borrow a phrase from the book, wounded lions, grow up to be men.
Jellicoe Road - Chaz Santangelo, Raffaela, Hannah Schroeder, Jude Scanlon
Request: I know this is a weird character combination, so I'll start by saying that you don't need to shove all four characters into one story. What I'd like instead is for you to write me one of two stories. The first would be a story about Jude and Hannah's past, i.e. what happened to them between the end of Hannah's book and the start of Taylor's. The second would be a story about Chaz and Raffy's future. Are they going to end up marrying people and ruining people's marriages or will they figure their shit out? Or maybe it's something else altogether. I just want to know everything about these characters.
Jellicoe Road isn't my favorite of Marchetta's books and it isn't even the one that I anticipated asking for fic about this year. (For the record, that would have been The Piper's Son.) But I reread it over a trip to visit my family and something about these two relationships tugged at me and said, "you want fic about that."
I guess what I feel like these relationships have in common is that they're fraught. The circumstances under which Jude and Narnie's relationship was formed, then their inability to be together in the way they clearly both want. Whatever has happened to fracture Chaz and Raffy's friendship and maybe-more-ship. You can feel the tension between these characters radiate off the page and while I was reading I just ached for everyone involved.
I want to know more about what happens between Narnie's memories of their first time and when they break up when Taylor is seven. I want to know what makes them end it at all. I want to know what happens in the ten years that follow, when they're not together except in passing. I want to know everything about their past and how that informs what will be their future.
I want to know what happens to Chaz and Raffy after the book ends. Do they go to the same school, do they date other people, do they let themselves be together the way that they so clearly seem meant to be? Do they come back and live together off the Jellicoe Road, like Raffy tells Taylor that the two of them will some day? What does a future where the four of them know each other for the rest of their lives look like?
If you want to include anyone from Marchetta's other contemporary works (so Saving Francesca and Piper's Son), I am totally down with that because I enjoy the semi-shared universe that these works inhabit.
Tennis RPF - Juan Martin del Potro
Request: Delpo hurt/comfort please! Or just Delpo hugs. Or just Delpo. I'm not picky.
I didn't think I was going to ask for Tennis RPF again, because I got a great gift last year that more or less exceeded my wildest dreams. And while there was stuff that I sort of vaguely wanted, there wasn't anything that reached out and grabbed me and said you must have fic about this RIGHT NOW or you will die of sadness.
And then the Olympics happened.
Specifically Delpo at the Olympics happened and he hugged people and wept and it sent me down a spiral of hugging photos and now all I want is Delpo involved hurt/comfort or just straight up hugging, because my god. Oh, you missed the hugging? Here, let me provide some photographic evidence of Delpo hugging people throughout the years for you.
Here is what kicked it off:
Here are links to other examples:
Novak, Novak again, Fed, Mardy Fish, Nadal, Roddick, Murray, Novak again, Roddick again, Federer again, Novak the fourth, and finally, the gold medal match hug with Murray. (Here is a Davis Cup draw pic with Murray, it's not a hug but you know he wants it to be.)
I have no real thoughts on pairings or other players I want involved. If you want to just do stuff with these Olympics, that's perfectly fine. If you want to use any of the pictures included as inspiration, that's fine too. If you want to write me five dudes Delpo hugged, that is great. I'm open to whatever you want to write as long as it involves Delpo and hugs.
Political RPF - US 19th Century - John Quincy Adams, Louisa Catherine Adams
Request: Please write me something from their courtship in London or during their separation while engaged or anything from before or immediately after their wedding.
Speaking of requests that I never expected to make, I can honestly say that I never imagined being in a position where I really wanted to read fic about John Quincy Adams and his wife Louisa. But I read the biography, Louisa The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams by Louisa Thomas, in August and ever since, I have been struck by an overwhelming desire to do just that.
I think what I'm drawn to most is the intense combination of self-loathing and passion that their courtship seems to have contained. Here, have some excerpts from Louisa to demonstrate what I'm talking about:
"John Quincy associated London with danger--pleasure and enchantment. The problem wasn't that he wasn't enjoying himself; the problem was that he was.
Instead of attending to Tacitus, instead of reflecting on the dramatic changes taking place in Europe and on the formidable challenges the nascent United States faced, John Quincy was walking in the park with the Johnson girls. He was horrified by his own pleasure. He had not gone to the Johnsons' house in the hopes of coming away with a wife. But he was drawn to their manner of life, the animate warmth of the parlor, the refuge from the English winter evenings he spent alone. [...] The terse, self-critical, agonized John Quincy that appears in his diary is not the John Quincy that Louisa met at her house. He knew it as well as she.
[...]
He tried not to enjoy himself, but he could not help it. 'Wherefore must this be so please?' he wrote, resisting and acquiescing at once. The contrast between this letter and the writing in his diary is almost tragic. He both wanted to be with her and wanted to run from her.
[...]
A maelstrom of emotions and self-reproaches was raging within the heart and mind of Louisa's suitor, behind the wall of the stony expression he had learned to practice as a boy. [...] She had no idea of Quincy, no conception of the Puritan inheritance, no real understanding that John Quincy like his forebears, distrusted happiness and was prone to punish himself. But she could sense that something was not right."
~Louisa, Part 1, Chapter 3
LOOK AT ALL THAT GORGEOUS PURITAN SELF-LOATHING, HOW GREAT IS THAT???
Have some more, from after they're actually engaged and separated by the English Channel.
"They would apologize and try to soothe each other's hurt feelings, calling each barb a proof of their care. Sometimes their apologies would work; their letters, even the harsh ones, were little grappling hooks binding them together. They could not efface their attraction; they did in fact care. But mail took time to travel, and before one conciliatory letter could arrive, another hurtful missive was already en route, slashing open the wounds before they could heal.
'I am so miserably dull, stupid,and cross, that I have gained the appellation of the Nun,' Louisa wrote.
'I will freely confess a material change which absence has produced," John Quincy replied. 'It is the restoration of sober reason, and reflection, which alas! If they did not abandon me were without all the influence they should have, during the latter part of my residence in London. It was indeed a time of delight; but a time of too much indulgence...I am the man I was when you first knew me'--which is to say the man who had not returned to the Johnsons' right away. 'My lovely friend, that man, is much more estimable, and much more respectable than the man I was for two or three months before I left you.' He could not have been more provocative. He was not the man who had fallen in love.
They were pushed to the brink. With quiet sadness, with philosophy, she saw that they might have gone too far. 'Let us mutually forget the past,' she wrote. 'Our departure for America is fixed.' The Johnsons were to leave England in three months. She would, she wrote, 'indulge the pleasing idea' that he would follow them soon, and when he did, she would be happy to 'share the simple fortunes of my dearest friend.' Only then, 'should this happen,' when he was 'divested of rank,' would she be able to prove that he, not his station, was what drew her to him--'that it was not your situation, but yourself that I loved.'
It nearly ended there--almost in heartbreak. She felt she had to prove herself and her affections to him. She felt him slipping away. 'Should this happen,' she had written, because there was doubt. Though anguished, she was ready to let go. Gracefully, she was saying goodbye. But John Quincy changed course once more. He pulled her back.
On April 13, 1797, he wrote to her that circumstances had changed. It might be possible to come through London, if he could travel by an American ship (such as one, incidentally, that Joshua owned), and if he was able to come to London, then he would marry Louisa and bring her to Lisbon.
He gave Louisa a chance to call of their engagement. He spoke honestly. They knew each other now; they knew not only their attraction to each other but also their capacity to repel. 'You know the Man you have chosen, for the friend of your life,' he wrote to her.
You know him the better, for that absence, which has at once shewn you a trial of his affection and of his temper. He has disguised to you none of his failings and weaknesses. You know the chances of hardship, inconvenience and danger, which you may be called to share with him. You know his inviolable attachment to his Country, and his resolute determination not to continue long his absence from it. You know that upon his retirement, the state of his fortune with require privations, which will be painful to him only as they may affect you. Choose, Louisa, choose for yourself, and be assured that his Heart will ratify your choice.'
[...]
She could have told him to leave for Lisbon without her. Instead, she told him to come."
~Louisa, Part 1, Chapter 6
IT'S JUST A LOT THAT MAKES ME FEEL A LOT OF THINGS.
So anyway, like I said up top, I'd really like something that plays with the contrasts between their emotions, the pushing and pulling of attraction and repulsion that the excerpts I've quote really emphasize. I am open to however you want to do that, whether that be through angry letters or fights or period-inappropriate pre-marital sex. Because whether or not they did, they sure as hell wanted to.
Whatever you do, just make it heavy on the feelings. That's all I need.
And that's it. I can't wait to read what you're going to write me on December 25!
Love,
Me
Hello! Thank you for the story you're about to write me. I'm extremely fond of all of the things that I've asked for and if you've offered them, you probably are too and that makes me very happy, because I like when people like the things that I like.
Before getting to the fandoms themselves, I always think it's good to cover general likes and dislikes so that no one gets any terrible surprises later on.
Things I like include: friends to lovers, porn, reluctant allies, hurt/comfort, emotional codependence, baby/kid fic, character development, banter, road trips, "oh no, [they're] hot," fake dating, casual touching, all touching, intimacy of all kinds. There are probably more, but that is a relatively representative list.
Things I don't like include: non-con, character bashing. That's pretty much it.
Now, as for the fandoms themselves, I tried to give at least a couple sentences on each of them on my sign up. But, uh, I have more to say about almost all of them. And explanatory quotes. Or gifs. Or pictures of hugs. Or just me rambling, there's going to be a lot of that. I hope that it's helpful in some way.
National Football League RPF - Andrew Luck
Request: I would like fic about Andrew Luck and his ping pong playing robot best friend.
This is not a Yuletide request that I ever expected to make. I'm an NFL fan, but I'm not especially into RPF about the players. I'm a Packers fan, not an Indianapolis fan. And above all else, as a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and a Russell Wilson partisan, I am not an Andrew Luck fan.
Well. I suppose it's more accurate to say I wasn't an Andrew Luck fan. Because that is definitely changing, and it's in no small part due to an episode of The Ringer's NFL podcast, where he talked about his book club and revealed his desire to have a robot to play ping pong with.
I don't even know why I love the idea of it so much, besides the utter charm of it. He's rich. He's successful. He's not unattractive. He could have most anything he wants with a snap of his fingers. And what he wants to buy when he gets his big contract is a robot because sometimes he can't find people who want to hang when he wants to play ping pong.
IT'S SO RIDICULOUSLY ENDEARING.
So I would like fic about this. I'm not opposed to a scenario where the robot falls in love, but mostly I just want their adventures together playing a silly sport. Maybe they listen to audiobooks for the Andrew Luck book club together. Maybe the robot offers beard grooming advice. I don't know their lives.
But yeah. Andrew Luck and his ping pong playing robot BFF. Make it happen.
The Reluctant Widow - Edward Carlyon, Elinor Rochdale
Request: Courtship! Please give me all the courtship.
This is a repeat of my 2015 request for which I received an absolutely lovely Yuletide treat, but I just love this book so much and I want more.
'Then-My Lord, I do not know what scheme you may have in your head, but-'
'I hope you will think better of this determination to seek another post as governess.'
'Well, I shall not, I assure you, sir! I told you once before that I would not become your pensioner, and I beg of you to believe that I meant it!'
'I hope that you will become my wife,' he replied, with all his usual calm.
She was stricken to silence, and was aware of nothing but the hammering of her heart in her chest.
He continued after a moment. 'I should not be making such a declaration to you yet, but I think my sentiments cannot be unknown to you.'
'Quite-quite unknown, my lord!' she said, in a voice which did not seem to be her own.
'I have tried to conceal them. It is too soon, and I would not upon an account embarrass you. But when the period of your strict mourning is over it is my very ardent desire to be permitted to pay my addresses to you.'
There's more, but that gets to the heart of it. GIVE ME COURTING OR GIVE ME DEATH.
There's just so much potential here. Ned trying to woo Elinor under the incredibly amused gaze of his sister, while Elinor is like, "dude, I already agreed to marry you, can we get to that part please." But he promised and running away to Gretna Green is just not the done thing, you know. If you want to mimic the gothic mystery tone of the book, that's cool, but I don't need it. I just need the courting. Because I do.
The President's Daughter - Steven Powers, Neal Powers
Request: I'd like a story about Steven and Neal coping with the events of the books as they happen (so Meg's kidnapping, the assassination attempt, the fracturing of the Powers family, etc.) or a look at who they might become in the future.
So I realize that the title of the series is The President's Daughter and as such, it might seem a little strange to want fic about the sons instead. I got a perfect Yuletide gift about Meg (and Preston) in my second Yuletide, though, and while I am totally on board with including both of them in this story, I feel like asking for anything else on that front would make me greedy. But I've been thinking about these books a lot lately, given what's been going on in the US politically, and it felt like I needed to revisit these characters.
We only ever see Steven and Neal through Meg's eyes, but there always seems to be so much else going on with them. The events of the books hit both boys hard, especially Steven, and we get such a limited look at how they cope. Neal agrees to therapy, Steven agrees only in the context of sports psychology. Neal was absolutely certain Meg was coming home, Steven, I feel okay assuming was less certain and also likes the outcome less. There's also that Neal and Seven have their own relationship that we don't see ("Neal notices everything, he only pretends not to so his stomach doesn't hurt"), and I can only imagine that as their family suffers and as Meg moves away, that relationship gets closer.
But if the era of the books doesn't interest you, what about what comes after? Does Neal go to West Point after all? Does Steven run as far as he can from the White House and politics and actually become a baseball player? How do he and Meg rebuild their closer relationship from the earlier books, because I really want to believe that happens. What do the Powers siblings look like ten years after their mom is out of the White House?
I'd just like to see how a pair of boys who were, to borrow a phrase from the book, wounded lions, grow up to be men.
Jellicoe Road - Chaz Santangelo, Raffaela, Hannah Schroeder, Jude Scanlon
Request: I know this is a weird character combination, so I'll start by saying that you don't need to shove all four characters into one story. What I'd like instead is for you to write me one of two stories. The first would be a story about Jude and Hannah's past, i.e. what happened to them between the end of Hannah's book and the start of Taylor's. The second would be a story about Chaz and Raffy's future. Are they going to end up marrying people and ruining people's marriages or will they figure their shit out? Or maybe it's something else altogether. I just want to know everything about these characters.
Jellicoe Road isn't my favorite of Marchetta's books and it isn't even the one that I anticipated asking for fic about this year. (For the record, that would have been The Piper's Son.) But I reread it over a trip to visit my family and something about these two relationships tugged at me and said, "you want fic about that."
I guess what I feel like these relationships have in common is that they're fraught. The circumstances under which Jude and Narnie's relationship was formed, then their inability to be together in the way they clearly both want. Whatever has happened to fracture Chaz and Raffy's friendship and maybe-more-ship. You can feel the tension between these characters radiate off the page and while I was reading I just ached for everyone involved.
I want to know more about what happens between Narnie's memories of their first time and when they break up when Taylor is seven. I want to know what makes them end it at all. I want to know what happens in the ten years that follow, when they're not together except in passing. I want to know everything about their past and how that informs what will be their future.
I want to know what happens to Chaz and Raffy after the book ends. Do they go to the same school, do they date other people, do they let themselves be together the way that they so clearly seem meant to be? Do they come back and live together off the Jellicoe Road, like Raffy tells Taylor that the two of them will some day? What does a future where the four of them know each other for the rest of their lives look like?
If you want to include anyone from Marchetta's other contemporary works (so Saving Francesca and Piper's Son), I am totally down with that because I enjoy the semi-shared universe that these works inhabit.
Tennis RPF - Juan Martin del Potro
Request: Delpo hurt/comfort please! Or just Delpo hugs. Or just Delpo. I'm not picky.
I didn't think I was going to ask for Tennis RPF again, because I got a great gift last year that more or less exceeded my wildest dreams. And while there was stuff that I sort of vaguely wanted, there wasn't anything that reached out and grabbed me and said you must have fic about this RIGHT NOW or you will die of sadness.
And then the Olympics happened.
Specifically Delpo at the Olympics happened and he hugged people and wept and it sent me down a spiral of hugging photos and now all I want is Delpo involved hurt/comfort or just straight up hugging, because my god. Oh, you missed the hugging? Here, let me provide some photographic evidence of Delpo hugging people throughout the years for you.
Here is what kicked it off:
Here are links to other examples:
Novak, Novak again, Fed, Mardy Fish, Nadal, Roddick, Murray, Novak again, Roddick again, Federer again, Novak the fourth, and finally, the gold medal match hug with Murray. (Here is a Davis Cup draw pic with Murray, it's not a hug but you know he wants it to be.)
I have no real thoughts on pairings or other players I want involved. If you want to just do stuff with these Olympics, that's perfectly fine. If you want to use any of the pictures included as inspiration, that's fine too. If you want to write me five dudes Delpo hugged, that is great. I'm open to whatever you want to write as long as it involves Delpo and hugs.
Political RPF - US 19th Century - John Quincy Adams, Louisa Catherine Adams
Request: Please write me something from their courtship in London or during their separation while engaged or anything from before or immediately after their wedding.
Speaking of requests that I never expected to make, I can honestly say that I never imagined being in a position where I really wanted to read fic about John Quincy Adams and his wife Louisa. But I read the biography, Louisa The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams by Louisa Thomas, in August and ever since, I have been struck by an overwhelming desire to do just that.
I think what I'm drawn to most is the intense combination of self-loathing and passion that their courtship seems to have contained. Here, have some excerpts from Louisa to demonstrate what I'm talking about:
"John Quincy associated London with danger--pleasure and enchantment. The problem wasn't that he wasn't enjoying himself; the problem was that he was.
Instead of attending to Tacitus, instead of reflecting on the dramatic changes taking place in Europe and on the formidable challenges the nascent United States faced, John Quincy was walking in the park with the Johnson girls. He was horrified by his own pleasure. He had not gone to the Johnsons' house in the hopes of coming away with a wife. But he was drawn to their manner of life, the animate warmth of the parlor, the refuge from the English winter evenings he spent alone. [...] The terse, self-critical, agonized John Quincy that appears in his diary is not the John Quincy that Louisa met at her house. He knew it as well as she.
[...]
He tried not to enjoy himself, but he could not help it. 'Wherefore must this be so please?' he wrote, resisting and acquiescing at once. The contrast between this letter and the writing in his diary is almost tragic. He both wanted to be with her and wanted to run from her.
[...]
A maelstrom of emotions and self-reproaches was raging within the heart and mind of Louisa's suitor, behind the wall of the stony expression he had learned to practice as a boy. [...] She had no idea of Quincy, no conception of the Puritan inheritance, no real understanding that John Quincy like his forebears, distrusted happiness and was prone to punish himself. But she could sense that something was not right."
~Louisa, Part 1, Chapter 3
LOOK AT ALL THAT GORGEOUS PURITAN SELF-LOATHING, HOW GREAT IS THAT???
Have some more, from after they're actually engaged and separated by the English Channel.
"They would apologize and try to soothe each other's hurt feelings, calling each barb a proof of their care. Sometimes their apologies would work; their letters, even the harsh ones, were little grappling hooks binding them together. They could not efface their attraction; they did in fact care. But mail took time to travel, and before one conciliatory letter could arrive, another hurtful missive was already en route, slashing open the wounds before they could heal.
'I am so miserably dull, stupid,and cross, that I have gained the appellation of the Nun,' Louisa wrote.
'I will freely confess a material change which absence has produced," John Quincy replied. 'It is the restoration of sober reason, and reflection, which alas! If they did not abandon me were without all the influence they should have, during the latter part of my residence in London. It was indeed a time of delight; but a time of too much indulgence...I am the man I was when you first knew me'--which is to say the man who had not returned to the Johnsons' right away. 'My lovely friend, that man, is much more estimable, and much more respectable than the man I was for two or three months before I left you.' He could not have been more provocative. He was not the man who had fallen in love.
They were pushed to the brink. With quiet sadness, with philosophy, she saw that they might have gone too far. 'Let us mutually forget the past,' she wrote. 'Our departure for America is fixed.' The Johnsons were to leave England in three months. She would, she wrote, 'indulge the pleasing idea' that he would follow them soon, and when he did, she would be happy to 'share the simple fortunes of my dearest friend.' Only then, 'should this happen,' when he was 'divested of rank,' would she be able to prove that he, not his station, was what drew her to him--'that it was not your situation, but yourself that I loved.'
It nearly ended there--almost in heartbreak. She felt she had to prove herself and her affections to him. She felt him slipping away. 'Should this happen,' she had written, because there was doubt. Though anguished, she was ready to let go. Gracefully, she was saying goodbye. But John Quincy changed course once more. He pulled her back.
On April 13, 1797, he wrote to her that circumstances had changed. It might be possible to come through London, if he could travel by an American ship (such as one, incidentally, that Joshua owned), and if he was able to come to London, then he would marry Louisa and bring her to Lisbon.
He gave Louisa a chance to call of their engagement. He spoke honestly. They knew each other now; they knew not only their attraction to each other but also their capacity to repel. 'You know the Man you have chosen, for the friend of your life,' he wrote to her.
You know him the better, for that absence, which has at once shewn you a trial of his affection and of his temper. He has disguised to you none of his failings and weaknesses. You know the chances of hardship, inconvenience and danger, which you may be called to share with him. You know his inviolable attachment to his Country, and his resolute determination not to continue long his absence from it. You know that upon his retirement, the state of his fortune with require privations, which will be painful to him only as they may affect you. Choose, Louisa, choose for yourself, and be assured that his Heart will ratify your choice.'
[...]
She could have told him to leave for Lisbon without her. Instead, she told him to come."
~Louisa, Part 1, Chapter 6
IT'S JUST A LOT THAT MAKES ME FEEL A LOT OF THINGS.
So anyway, like I said up top, I'd really like something that plays with the contrasts between their emotions, the pushing and pulling of attraction and repulsion that the excerpts I've quote really emphasize. I am open to however you want to do that, whether that be through angry letters or fights or period-inappropriate pre-marital sex. Because whether or not they did, they sure as hell wanted to.
Whatever you do, just make it heavy on the feelings. That's all I need.
And that's it. I can't wait to read what you're going to write me on December 25!
Love,
Me