Yuletide Letter
Dear Yuletide Writer,
First of all, I’m thrilled you’re writing a story for me! Thank you so much! I should say upfront that if you have to make a choice between writing the story OF YOUR HEART that you really want to write and following one of the prompts I give below, I would far prefer you to write the aforementioned story OF YOUR HEART.
Seriously, I will be happy to receive anything in any of my nominated fandoms! I have no triggers and no serious squicks. Any permutation of all those F/F M/M F/M whatever/whatever ticky boxes is ok by me, although to be honest I’m not really in fandom for the shipping or indeed the porn. I will be fascinated if you write some of the latter, mind you (especially for the Švankmajer, OH BOY), but I haven’t prompted for it or anything. If you’d like to see some of the things I have managed to prompt for, see below the cut!
Spirited Away / Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi
I’ll be honest, much as I love all the characters in this film, what I enjoy most of all is the world of the bathhouse. I would love to know whether Haku and Chiriho do ever meet again, how Haku ended up in servitude to Yubaba, and what (if anything) sparked off the feud between Yubaba and Zenibaba. But I would be equally happy with a day in the life of the bathhouse, or an exploration of the wider world of any of its guests or denizens.
Gawain and the Green Knight
Seasonal and incredibly gorgeous, this one! As far as I know, all modern versions of the story stem from the fourteenth century poem which survives in the Pearl Manuscript, and if you want to touch on the other poems in there (especially Pearl itself) in some way, feel free. I love the Gawain poet’s alliterative verse more than I can say, so if you want to play around with that, or riff off his amazing, tactile descriptions of clothing and winter and castles, that would be fantastic. I’m no medievalist, though, so don’t worry if the language foxes you (and, uh, if you do manage a pitch-perfect rendition of fourteenth-century English from around Cheshire, you may be casting your pearls before swine…).
Otherwise, there is SO MUCH to play on in this story. What does happen, exactly, when Gawain gets back to court? What does courtesy mean in this story? Truth? Game? What does Sir Bertilak’s dual nature mean for his relationship with his wife? How precisely did he end up as the Green Knight, and did his wife have any say in the matter? In fact, though I’ll be happy even if you decide to write an epic enlargement of the hunting and butchering scenes, I’d really like the lady of Hautdesert to be in there somewhere, in all her witty, sexy, tricksy glory.
Faust (1994; Jan Švankmajer)
Ok, this seems to be readily available, courtesy of the internet (just ask google!), but it isn’t out on dvd anywhere, as far as I know, is only out on region one dvd, so if you don't know it and have objections to buying or ahem-ing it, please just take this as an invitation to go wild with the Faustus story and as an indication of various things I enjoy in any story whatsoever: puppets! Playing around with theatricality! Alchemy! Unwise bargains! Details of rot and over-the-top spectacle! IT IS ALL GOOD. And, I mean, so are the serious questions Švankmajer seems to be raising about, for instance, the nature of free will and the infectiousness of certain narratives and the glamour of theatre. Feel free to draw on Marlowe and Goethe and Gounod and so on, or not, as the case may be. And if you want to engage with the film as a Czech story first and foremost, set very obviously in Prague, that would be great too, though I’ll admit that my own up-close and personal knowledge of Eastern Europe is limited to a few days in Budapest.
Blade Runner
This is another film where I would be more than happy with a mood piece set in its world, though I’d particularly enjoy seeing the Sinicisation of the culture being explored more thoroughly than it was in the film, where it was pretty skin-deep. Mind you, plot and action would be great as well: I’d love to hear backstories for any of the replicants, or a post-canon version of how things turn out for Deckard and Rachel. I’m not enormously shippy about them, btw, so don’t worry about keeping them as a pair. Seeing Rachel develop some agency of her own would be fantastic. I’d be delighted, also, with explorations of the early development of replicants, or their implications for the culture at large: what ethical twists and turns led to the list of questions on the humanity-test at the start of the film, for instance? I’m pretty wedded to the revised, voiceover-free version of the film, by the way, but otherwise all bets are off.
Other things of note:
Given that a trawl back through my scanty back-catalogue will reveal that one meta I wrote about not liking schmoop, and that two of my requests are, well, on the gloomy side, I feel it incumbent on me to note that I am not, in fact, the Grinch. Fun and wackiness and even moderate schmoopiness are all fine by me, promise!
Other things I enjoy finding in stories: a sense of the weight of the past, of legacy and inheritance. Playing around with literary form. Want to write a ballad? Limericks? Rhyming slang? Be my guest! Close attention to landscape and/or cityscape. Descriptions of liminal areas - train stations; petrol (gas) stations; motels. Intricate familial relationships. Puns. Loving attention to costume and fashion. Ancient artefacts with unknown properties. Dead languages (not that I’m a linguist, mind you). Inanimate objects coming to life. Descriptions of hands. Food and cooking. Friends getting drunk together. Strange plants. Scenes set under water.
... Ok, I think I’m done! Thank you so much, oh Yuletide writer, and feel free to ignore all of the above!
First of all, I’m thrilled you’re writing a story for me! Thank you so much! I should say upfront that if you have to make a choice between writing the story OF YOUR HEART that you really want to write and following one of the prompts I give below, I would far prefer you to write the aforementioned story OF YOUR HEART.
Seriously, I will be happy to receive anything in any of my nominated fandoms! I have no triggers and no serious squicks. Any permutation of all those F/F M/M F/M whatever/whatever ticky boxes is ok by me, although to be honest I’m not really in fandom for the shipping or indeed the porn. I will be fascinated if you write some of the latter, mind you (especially for the Švankmajer, OH BOY), but I haven’t prompted for it or anything. If you’d like to see some of the things I have managed to prompt for, see below the cut!
Spirited Away / Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi
I’ll be honest, much as I love all the characters in this film, what I enjoy most of all is the world of the bathhouse. I would love to know whether Haku and Chiriho do ever meet again, how Haku ended up in servitude to Yubaba, and what (if anything) sparked off the feud between Yubaba and Zenibaba. But I would be equally happy with a day in the life of the bathhouse, or an exploration of the wider world of any of its guests or denizens.
Gawain and the Green Knight
Seasonal and incredibly gorgeous, this one! As far as I know, all modern versions of the story stem from the fourteenth century poem which survives in the Pearl Manuscript, and if you want to touch on the other poems in there (especially Pearl itself) in some way, feel free. I love the Gawain poet’s alliterative verse more than I can say, so if you want to play around with that, or riff off his amazing, tactile descriptions of clothing and winter and castles, that would be fantastic. I’m no medievalist, though, so don’t worry if the language foxes you (and, uh, if you do manage a pitch-perfect rendition of fourteenth-century English from around Cheshire, you may be casting your pearls before swine…).
Otherwise, there is SO MUCH to play on in this story. What does happen, exactly, when Gawain gets back to court? What does courtesy mean in this story? Truth? Game? What does Sir Bertilak’s dual nature mean for his relationship with his wife? How precisely did he end up as the Green Knight, and did his wife have any say in the matter? In fact, though I’ll be happy even if you decide to write an epic enlargement of the hunting and butchering scenes, I’d really like the lady of Hautdesert to be in there somewhere, in all her witty, sexy, tricksy glory.
Faust (1994; Jan Švankmajer)
Ok, this seems to be readily available, courtesy of the internet (just ask google!), but it isn’t out on dvd anywhere, as far as I know, is only out on region one dvd, so if you don't know it and have objections to buying or ahem-ing it, please just take this as an invitation to go wild with the Faustus story and as an indication of various things I enjoy in any story whatsoever: puppets! Playing around with theatricality! Alchemy! Unwise bargains! Details of rot and over-the-top spectacle! IT IS ALL GOOD. And, I mean, so are the serious questions Švankmajer seems to be raising about, for instance, the nature of free will and the infectiousness of certain narratives and the glamour of theatre. Feel free to draw on Marlowe and Goethe and Gounod and so on, or not, as the case may be. And if you want to engage with the film as a Czech story first and foremost, set very obviously in Prague, that would be great too, though I’ll admit that my own up-close and personal knowledge of Eastern Europe is limited to a few days in Budapest.
Blade Runner
This is another film where I would be more than happy with a mood piece set in its world, though I’d particularly enjoy seeing the Sinicisation of the culture being explored more thoroughly than it was in the film, where it was pretty skin-deep. Mind you, plot and action would be great as well: I’d love to hear backstories for any of the replicants, or a post-canon version of how things turn out for Deckard and Rachel. I’m not enormously shippy about them, btw, so don’t worry about keeping them as a pair. Seeing Rachel develop some agency of her own would be fantastic. I’d be delighted, also, with explorations of the early development of replicants, or their implications for the culture at large: what ethical twists and turns led to the list of questions on the humanity-test at the start of the film, for instance? I’m pretty wedded to the revised, voiceover-free version of the film, by the way, but otherwise all bets are off.
Other things of note:
Given that a trawl back through my scanty back-catalogue will reveal that one meta I wrote about not liking schmoop, and that two of my requests are, well, on the gloomy side, I feel it incumbent on me to note that I am not, in fact, the Grinch. Fun and wackiness and even moderate schmoopiness are all fine by me, promise!
Other things I enjoy finding in stories: a sense of the weight of the past, of legacy and inheritance. Playing around with literary form. Want to write a ballad? Limericks? Rhyming slang? Be my guest! Close attention to landscape and/or cityscape. Descriptions of liminal areas - train stations; petrol (gas) stations; motels. Intricate familial relationships. Puns. Loving attention to costume and fashion. Ancient artefacts with unknown properties. Dead languages (not that I’m a linguist, mind you). Inanimate objects coming to life. Descriptions of hands. Food and cooking. Friends getting drunk together. Strange plants. Scenes set under water.
... Ok, I think I’m done! Thank you so much, oh Yuletide writer, and feel free to ignore all of the above!