(no subject)
Hello, my dear writer! Thank you so very much for offering fic in what I freely acknowledge are Very Small Fandoms--I believe Hamlet has the largest body of work of any of the fandoms I've requested. The first thing that you should know, therefore, is that I will be happy with nearly anything you write. If you love even one of these fandoms as much as I do, I trust you to produce a story that I'll want to read. I provide optional details and tropes that I enjoy because they'd be useful for me, if I were my writer, but as far as I'm concerned, they're just that: optional. Follow your muse when you write for me, and trust your own strengths.
I'm slash/het/gen/poly/ace-friendly and all-ratings-friendly, I love kinkfic, and I ADORE AUs, so don't worry too much about whether your idea is too outlandish or racy. I enjoy a wide variety of genres, from the venerable crackfic to the comedy of manners to the action-packed war story; I have no hangups regarding narrative person or tense. As a writer and a reader, I'm primarily interested in world-building and milieu, but if those aren't your strengths, do feel free to focus on character conflict or snarky banter. A few of the tropes that I adore: Ensemble Pieces, Good Man in a Bad War, War as Continuation of Policy by Other Means, Scholar/Soldiers and Poet/Soldiers, Good Sons, Prodigal Sons, Good Sons Who Are Daughters, Twists at the End, Documents and Epistles, Language Games, Polymaths, Pygmalions and Apollos (who transubstantiate flesh and art), the Resisting Galatea (who refuses to be changed from art to flesh), the Mastered Marsyas (who permits himself, however reluctantly, to be changed from flesh to art), the Lone Man in a Hard Land, the Long Road Home, and You Can't Go Home Again.
There are really only two things that you can do that will make me unhappy--bash the characters, or write dubious consent. When I say 'dubious consent,' what I'm talking about is the kind of fic where 'I didn't hear a no' (or 'that "no" didn't sound very convincing') serves as grounds to press one's sexual attentions on another. I'd really prefer not to read that for my Yuletide fic.
I've added some links to my prompts to give you some idea of what themes and literary references really interest me; I've also enabled anonymous commenting and turned off IP logging, so if you want further clarification, do feel free to ask for more!
Hamlet - Shakespeare
(No characters selected)
This year, I'm really interested in the theme of family secrets and horrors that are always more vast and terrible than their immediate manifestations. For this reason, I would be exceedingly keen on a Lovecraftian horror AU here--something to the tune of 'Rats in the Walls,' but without the egregious racism. (Is something really, deeply rotten in the state of Denmark? How long have things been this bad?) If horror really isn't your bag, I'm still mostly interested in familial relationships; something to do with how Laertes and Ophelia attempt to make space in their worldviews for each other, or how Hamlet and his father got on, or how Claudius was as an uncle, or how the Wittenberg crew makes a chosen family (and then how that family falls apart).
Hamlet is in many ways a play about the frustration or redirection of familial legacies; there are lots of fascinating, lateral transmissions of power there, rather than the top-down model that we're used to from more conventional patrilineal inheritance. Hamlet isn't the heir because he lives in an electoral monarchy, and Claudius isn't a suitable husband for Gertrude because he's the king's brother; Laertes isn't present when his father dies, and Ophelia goes mad at least in part because she's the only one available to set her father to rest (in a play where setting the dead to rest means destroying the murderer). The destruction of the Danish royal family paves the way for Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, to inherit a legacy legitimately that he'd meant to take by force. It's this thematic element of the play--inheritance, and what duties it forces on the descendants least prepared for it--that I'd like to see you take on.
When I say that I'd like to see a Lovecraftian horror AU along the lines of 'The Rats in the Walls,' I was envisioning an exploration of a history of monstrosity in Hamlet's family--and whether Claudius is the apotheosis of that monstrosity, or whether he's trying to uproot it. Was the king manifesting horrific traits that necessitated his murder? Does Hamlet, too, seem poised to inherit that monstrous legacy? Is it a monstrosity that can be useful, perhaps even one that could be pitied and loved (by Gertrude? by Ophelia? by Horatio?), or one that inspires only revulsion? How does it feel to recognize the monstrous in oneself? How does the play's truly obscene body count factor in? Why the recurrence of poison, and why the obsession with the restless dead?
If you're not interested in writing Lovecraftian horror, though, you don't have to. I'm interested in the horror of heritage, yes, but I'm also interested in the more ordinary uncertainty that Laertes, Ophelia, and Hamlet must be experiencing, as their fathers' scions. How do they make chosen families, within or outside of Denmark? How do they square with their sense of obligation to their fathers while those men are alive, and how does that filial duty alter when their fathers die? How does brotherhood and sisterhood--that too-neglected familial relation--factor into the political climate at Denmark? What was it like for Claudius to be the king's brother, when times were better?
I haven't listed characters for this prompt because for this piece, I'd genuinely be interested in reading about anyone--yes, even the most minor of minor characters. Indeed, I'd be grateful to see more from the perspective of (for example) Reynaldo or Fortinbras, if none of the main characters inspires you. If you choose this prompt, you have an immense amount of freedom; use it to follow your inclinations.
14th Century CE RPF
(Timur-e Lang | Tamerlane | Tamburlaine)
In a century full of fascinating people, Timur definitely makes my list of top ten most fascinating--you might be familiar with him from Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, parts I and II, and if you know your history, you know that Marlowe might actually have undersold him. Although I'd be happy to see a slice-of-life story from his campaigns or his reign, what I'd love most of all is some kind of AU. A low-magic or even high fantasy AU would be fantastic; what would Timur's campaigns have been like, in a world with court-magicians and conjurers and demon-summoners and bargains with the dead? I'd also love a historical AU where Timur crossed the Volga and came up against other fascinating figures on the dropdown list (Jagiello, Vytautas, John Hawkwood, maybe even Margaret of Denmark), as political allies or military enemies. Who would be helped or hindered by his presence? How would up-and-comers attempt to use him to solidify their power?
Embarrassing confession time! I wrote this prompt because my good friend lareinenoire and I said, 'wouldn't it be cool if Tamburlaine and Henry V got together and conquered the world/shagged like bunnies/destroyed each other?' Then, alas, we realized that the dates were incompatible. 'But wait!' one of us said. 'What if Tamburlaine massacred a town TO MAKE A PACT WITH A DEMON FOR IMMORTALITY?!' Because clearly, the solution was not to acknowledge that Marlowe and Shakespeare played fast and loose with history; it was to introduce demonic pacts.
I share this anecdote to give you some idea of how much freedom you have with this prompt. If you want to introduce magic, demons, anachronistic airships, or guest stars from all across Europe and the Middle East, go for it!
The prompt, though, is not about Marlowe's Tamburlaine, because much as I adore him, he's simply not half as epic as his real-world counterpart. Tamburlaine the character is trapped within a tragical-heroic telos; Timur the man was not. In Tamburlaine, Part I, Tamburlaine was transformed into a kind of boy-conqueror, his sons as yet unborn, but in our world, he captured Bayezid I (Bajazeth, in the play) when he was sixty-three years old. Clearly the man was a powerhouse, and if he hadn't had the poor luck to die in a nasty winter campaign, he probably would've kept conquering and ruling well into his eighties. Hence, my request for an AU or alternate timeline where he turns to Europe rather than to China--because I want to see what Timur would do, given another decade and some well-known opponents to clobber.
As thoroughly epic as his military campaigns were, though, Timur was a savvy politician, too. He was well aware of the importance of symbolism and of establishing a culture of which he was the undisputed patron. Thus, it would be not only logical but entirely fitting for you to explore how political actors attempted to cope with the threat that Timur posed. How would he make treaties and gain loyalty? What would people do in China, or in Egypt, or in Turkey, or in Poland, if they heard that an invasion was imminent? What would his allies do to jockey for position, and what would his enemies do to appease him?
This is perhaps the most daunting of the prompts I've provided, this year, because it's very difficult to write a short and meditative piece for it--the prompt explicitly asks for you to do a lot of world-building and plot-building. I want to reiterate here, therefore, that optional details are optional. If you're not sure you have the time or inclination to write the fic I've requested, I can promise that I'll be happy with any fic about Timur.
Waverley - Walter Scott
(No characters selected)
Writer, I desire Jacobite slash. If I can have Jacobitism without the slash, I'll take that, too; that suggestive, sentimental portrait of Fergus and Edward in highland dress makes me want more of their story. Do bear in mind, however, that I very much like the female characters, and a fic that bashes them will not please me. A fic that includes Flora and honors her as a political actor would frankly be just as nice as Jacobite slash, and if you can find some plausible way of contriving Flora/Rose Jacobite slash, I would be positively giddy with delight.
As an eighteenth-century scholar, I chose to nominate Waverley primarily because I'm fascinated by the Jacobite movement and why it retained such emotional and political force for so long. I'm interested in the Jacobite ballads and the nostalgic optimism of the cause; I'm interested in the Scottish philological nationalists of the early nineteenth century (of whom Scott was one) who turned Jacobitism into a vital, present rhetoric as well as a somewhat unsuccessful history. I'm interested in why the characters believe as they do, why they choose to fight for Bonny Prince Charlie and why they love their cause and each other.
In lieu of a more complicated set of prompts, I give you some of the Jacobite songs that inspire me. Many of them came not from the Risings, but from the early-nineteenth-century revival when Waverley was written.
Donald McGillavry
Johnnie Cope
The Battle of Falkirk Muir
Wha'll Be King But Cherlie?
Coriolanus - Shakespeare
(Caius Martius (Coriolanus))
Shakespeare frequently--well, three times--employs dragon imagery to describe Coriolanus. These images render him a force for destruction, an inhuman engine of war sprung improbably from a Roman matron's loins ... and I want you to take that and run as far as you can with it. How you use those images is up to you; you can write a high fantasy AU (is Coriolanus a dragon? does he ride one into battle? does he have to fight one to prove that he can lead men?), or you can play with the dragon/dragoon connection (historical AU, setting Coriolanus in the seventeenth century? steampunk/sandalpunk AU with mounted Romans wielding firearms?), or you can write me a moody piece where Volumnia thinks about the boy she's training to be a soldier. I'm a huge fan of Coriolanus/Aufidius and Coriolanus/Cominius, but it would also be fascinating to see more of how Martius conducts himself at home, with his wife and child.
Very few people will tell you that Coriolanus is their favorite of Shakespeare's plays, but if you peruse my list of favorite tropes, you'll see fairly swiftly why it's mine. It ticks most of my boxes: Good Dutiful Man in a Bad War, War as Continuation of Policy by Other Means, Good Sons, Prodigal Sons, the Mastered Marsyas (who permits himself, however reluctantly, to be changed from flesh to art), the Lone Man in a Hard Land, the Long Road Home, and You Can't Go Home Again. I love Coriolanus because it's a play about how a culture produced exactly the man it idealized, and how utterly incompatible that man was with his society.
I once had a professor who lectured on Beowulf, and who told me that each monster in some way manifested the evils latent in the society that produced it--and Beowulf's dragon was just such a monster, greedy as the humans of his land were greedy. When I say that I'd like to see you run with the dragon imagery in Coriolanus, that's something like what I'm asking you to do: Yes, I would love to see GREAT FLAMING DRAGONS in Rome, but I'd also like to see what those dragons (and Martius himself as and against those dragons) signify about Roman society. For your reference, here and here are the instances where Coriolanus is likened to a dragon.
-- Gil