dear yuletide writer
Hello, lovely Yuletide writer, are you as excited/terrified as I am? EXCELLENT. First off, I LOVE YOU. YOU ARE WRITING ME A STORY. HOW AWESOME ARE YOU. Secondly, I may be a bit drunk on coffee at the moment, so do forgive me.
stuff i love: Bittersweet stories. Bittersweet stories with happy endings but that still make your heart hurt a bit. People who really, really love each other, both platonically and romantically. Magic. Awesome clever ladies. Awesome clever ladies using their skills to save the world (especially if that skill is love or science or bookishness or something not traditionally seen as powerful). People who are very tactile with each other. Romances with a lot of longing and UST: but also romances where both parties are hugely comfortable with each other and committed to their relationship, and also bickery and cute. Worldbuilding. In fanfiction, exploring further the rules and assumptions and ideas of the universe one is writing in. Stories about family, both blood family and the family you create. T.S. Eliot (whaaaat? look, he ends up sneaking into half of what I write so I might as well mention him). Traditional folk ballads: they are to me like fairy tales are to most children, because I grew up with ballads and folklore and they're the stories that have shaped my life and thoughts and they have an intense emotional resonance for me. Cities and magic in cities and the grimy aesthetic of cities and brick and stone and decay and peoplewatching and so many disparate cultures coexisting. UNDERGROUND CITIES AND/OR CATACOMBS. Okay, self, this stuff is becoming irrelevant, you can stop. Uh. Also I love enthusiasm can you telllll.
i'm not so keen on: Explicit sex; it makes me feel awkward and voyueristic. Sorry! :/ It's better hinted at than described in detail, is what I'm saying. Uhhhh... meanspiritedness, character bashing, racism/sexism/religious bigotry (and/or all the religious characters being total wankers)/infidelity/basically things that make me sad and cranky? Otherwise I am totally good with all the stuff. I'm pretty on-board to like things in general, unless they are icky and uncomfortable, pretty much. Go wild!
I rambled pretty thoroughly on what I'd love to see in my fandoms of choice (oh lord I am so rambly what is wrong with me), but just in case, and so that you have One Big Reference Spot:
stuff i love: Bittersweet stories. Bittersweet stories with happy endings but that still make your heart hurt a bit. People who really, really love each other, both platonically and romantically. Magic. Awesome clever ladies. Awesome clever ladies using their skills to save the world (especially if that skill is love or science or bookishness or something not traditionally seen as powerful). People who are very tactile with each other. Romances with a lot of longing and UST: but also romances where both parties are hugely comfortable with each other and committed to their relationship, and also bickery and cute. Worldbuilding. In fanfiction, exploring further the rules and assumptions and ideas of the universe one is writing in. Stories about family, both blood family and the family you create. T.S. Eliot (whaaaat? look, he ends up sneaking into half of what I write so I might as well mention him). Traditional folk ballads: they are to me like fairy tales are to most children, because I grew up with ballads and folklore and they're the stories that have shaped my life and thoughts and they have an intense emotional resonance for me. Cities and magic in cities and the grimy aesthetic of cities and brick and stone and decay and peoplewatching and so many disparate cultures coexisting. UNDERGROUND CITIES AND/OR CATACOMBS. Okay, self, this stuff is becoming irrelevant, you can stop. Uh. Also I love enthusiasm can you telllll.
i'm not so keen on: Explicit sex; it makes me feel awkward and voyueristic. Sorry! :/ It's better hinted at than described in detail, is what I'm saying. Uhhhh... meanspiritedness, character bashing, racism/sexism/religious bigotry (and/or all the religious characters being total wankers)/infidelity/basically things that make me sad and cranky? Otherwise I am totally good with all the stuff. I'm pretty on-board to like things in general, unless they are icky and uncomfortable, pretty much. Go wild!
I rambled pretty thoroughly on what I'd love to see in my fandoms of choice (oh lord I am so rambly what is wrong with me), but just in case, and so that you have One Big Reference Spot:
- Those Who Hunt the Night - Barbara Hambly.
- ORIGINAL PROMPT: "Mostly I'd just love to see this canon explored more. I love Lydia and James and their relationship (and Lydia's badassery), and the weird, history-entangled un-humanness of Hambly's vampires. Probably what I'd love most is Lydia saving the world with science (with bonus James-is-a-linguist geekery), or Ysidro observing human culture in his detached, anthropological way, or an exploration of the ties between the humans and the vampires."
- Also: these are legitimately some of my favourite books in the world and Lydia Asher is my fictional hero. I may or may not have read Blood Maidens by Christmas, so there's that, I guess. (Technically it isn't even out in the States until January but it is purchaseable from British sources right now and I must have it.)
- English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Francis James Child.
- ORIGINAL PROMPT: "Either "Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" (aka "The Elf-Knight" or "The Outlandish Knight") or "Tam-Lin" fic would MAKE MY WORLD, because what do I love more than kickass folklore heroines who save themselves and/or the ones they love? NOTHING. NOTHING IS WHAT. "Tam Lin" is basically the story of my heart and I ramble giddily about it at the drop of a hat, really, but most of all I love Janet and how she forges her love into a weapon. Lady Isabel and her thinking fast and turning the tables on her would-be seducer and murderer is pretty fabulous as well. (I'd be really excited to read an interpretation in which the Outlandish Knight is a vampire, by the way.) Cameos or crossovers with any other traditional ballads ever would be welcome, if one were so inclined."
- Up there I said ballads are My Thing. I am not kidding about this. Nothing resonates with me like these old songs. (I read lots of fairy tales as a child, and I love fairy tales, but none of them ever personally belonged to me the way stuff like "Tam-Lin" does. Look, I have a tag and everything. "Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" is a newer love-affair, but akashdgh I love it a lot. Anyway, my original prompt does plenty of rambling on this affair. I will re-iterate, however, that I really love vampire mythology. So, there's that.
- The Wolfman (2010).
- ORIGINAL PROMPT: "There's a scene in this film in which I fell madly in love with Gwen, and it is when she says, of lycanthropy: “If such things exist, if they are possible - then everything is. Magic, and God- I can find a way to stop it.” She doesn’t go, “oh hell, if people can turn into bloodthirsty wolves then THE ENTIRE WORLD SUCKS so why bother with anything”: she says, if the miraculous bad is possible, then the miraculous good must exist also. Basically, I heart her and she wins at everything. I would love a Gwen character study, or post-movie fic in which Gwen learns magic and is awesome and saves the world and stuff (and it wouldn't hurt, either, if it went a little AU and had Gwen actually having been able to save Lawrence at the end WHICH SHE WOULD HAVE DONE IF IT WEREN'T FOR STUPID ELROND."
- Trufax: Emily Blunt and her portrayal of Gwen Conliffe is basically the entire reason I have a vast and passionate love for this mostly absurd film. (I fully admit that it is mostly absurd, although also reallyreally pretty in parts and there was some legitimately fantastic camera-work and also I loved the utter stifling dread that entombed the Talbot manor for the first half of the film when everybody's in mourning. Also the dream sequences, because surreality is my faaaavourite.) When I obsessively screencapped it on Tumblr I outright said that it is possible the movie only happens when Gwen is onscreen. >.> (SCHROEDINGER'S MOVIE what am I saying) Annnnyway, why am I trying to justify my barely-rational love for this film? THIS IS WHAT YULETIDE IS FOR. Also, re. the ending, in my head the whole film's a Tam-Lin retelling with werewolves and Gwen doesn't forsake her lover even when he's transformed in her arms into terrible things and when she lays claim to him and is steadfast and loves and MAGIC HAPPENS OKAY. (There are legitimate wolfy lyrics to some versions of Tam-Lin, too. NOT THAT I'VE RESEARCHED THIS OR ANYTHING. JUST SAYING.)
- Salamander - Thomas Wharton
- ORIGINAL PROMPT: "One of my favourite things about this novel is how it explores the magic of the book as object, as well as the magic of story. I'd love to read more riffs on that, more playing in that kind of world, with the mythology of the story trade. Following any characters before or during or after the story, again with that sense of magic and wonder, would be fascinating. I find myself especially interested in Pica -- who does she grow up to be? What does she do with her life?"
- Basically: I love this book and almost nobody else on the planet has read it and this breaks my heart. I can't even think of what to say about it other than that it is beautiful and strange and phantasmagorical and I want to dip into its world of booklore and metafiction again.