Dear Yuletide writer 2014!!
Thank you, thank you for offering one of the crazy rare fandoms I've wished for this year! I'm more excited about you writing for me than about Christmas!
In order to make your job perhaps a tad bit easier I'm going to give you a brief lists of likes and dislikes:
General dislikes:
- Sex-wise: Stories containing incest, non-con or beastiality - I wouldn't say I take offense, I simply skip them.
- Mood-wise: Stories that kill off my favourite characters. Feel free to torture them a little, but please let them have a bit of comfort and a happy ending afterwards. It is Christmas, after all...
- Genre-wise: Mpreg, kidfic, pregnancy tics in general (mostly because at the moment everyone in my circuit of friends seem to be getting knocked up, so please, not in fiction, too!), crack-fix (unless particularly intelligently written).
General likes:
- Gender-wise: I'm a feministy femslash kind of girl and love stories depicting strong female characters and relationship and/or romances between strong female characters.
- Character-dynamic-wise: To me, fan fiction is a great place for rebellion! I find it empowering when a heteronormative canon is moulded into a femslash romance, and I love it when an innocent and fragile woman of the canon turns out to be less innocent and fragile (eg. in the Rizzoli & Isles fandom I like it when the butch/femme dynamic between tough Jane and girly Maura is reversed so that, say, Maura carries a wounded Jane instead of the other way around).
- Romance-wise: Where romance is concerned, I have a thing for first time stories because I love the whole emotional should we/shouldn't we build-up. Always appreciate a good hurt/comfort scenario or a story revolving around someone finally showing their weak side and sharing all those pent up emotions:) As for rating, I'll read anything from fluff to PWP. Explicit is fine, as long as it plays a part in the plot and has a proper build-up.
- Genre-wise: I love imaginative cross-overs, as long as they stay true to the basic psychology of the characters.
...oh, and by the way, I have been neglecting this LJ profile lately. So if you want to check out some of my stories look up my profile on AO3 or fanfiction.net instead.
And with that onto my specific requests for this year:
REQUEST 1: Pippi Långstrump | Pippi Longstocking (TV)
I watched the Swedish tv show as a kid (in a dubbed version, that is), so it's close to my heart in a nostalgic kind of way. Even back then I preferred strong female characters, so I obviously loved Pippi - her strength, her generosity, her creativity, and her mischief!
One character I disliked at the time was the teacher, Ms. Prysselius (Fröken Prysselius), by Pippi derogatorily nicknamed "Prussenusken". For one, she wanted Pippi to go into a children's home instead of trusting in the girl's independence and skills. But also, in many ways, Ms. Prysselius was the opposite of what I admired in Pippi: She was very girly (in a badly dressed kind of way), she was a party-pooper trying to ruin Pippi's wonderful world, and she was sort of hysterical. Not "hysterical" as in funny, but as in nervous, easily scared, fidgeting, and quite obviously suffering from not getting any (her behavior around Pippi's dad when he finally arrives drives the point home). In other words: she constituted the classical, contrite stereotype of the old maid.
Ms. Prysselius was not part of the Pippi books, but Astrid Lindgren took part in writing the scripts for the tv series - and this confuses me: Why would Lindgren, who has written so many three-dimensional and interesting female characters go in for Ms. Prysselius?
Obviously, something is amiss here! And that's where you come in:)
To cut to the point: I would like to hear the backstory of Ms. Prysselius. I would like to go beyond trite stereotypes of unmarried women and learn about why she behaves the way she does (without resorting to the "oh, she needs a man" cliche), and more importantly: what else she contains. I'd like to see her fleshed out as a real character and to see glimpses of her that do not fit the dull stereotype. Perhaps a story where she does something that surprises Pippi? Perhaps she comes to the kids' rescue? Perhaps she is doing something when not teaching children that really surprises us and forces Pippi to change her opinion of Ms. Prysselius?
In short: Please give this woman literary redemption and make my inner feminist happy!!
Also, I always thought Anika had an innocent admiration crush on Pippi. Feel free to put that in somewhere too:)
REQUEST 2: Fucking Åmål | Show Me Love (1998)
This film came out (no pun intended) in 1998, when I was a 13-year-old closeted lesbian in a small town area much like Åmål. Needless to say it's still close to my heart. Oh, how I identified with Agnes and her intellectual teen gloom and secret crush! And how I relished in the happy ending for her that I didn't at the time think possible for me.
I rewatched it recently and thought about how much time has passed since Agnes and Elin found each other in Åmål. Queer visibility has increased, the size of cell phones decreased, and I've obviously aged myself. Which made me think: So has Agnes and Elin!
So what I would like to know is: Where are the characters of Åmål today? I find it hard to believe that the teenage relationship between two people as different as Agnes and Elin would last, but maybe they still keep in touch? Did Elin get out of Åmål and avoid ending up like her mother (with two screaming kids in fucking jävla Åmål, because her husband found a younger model), or did she pursue her dream of becoming a psychologist - or a model? :) And what about Agnes? Did she become a writer, or did she, like so many of us, settle for writing fan fiction(!) and take on a more mundane daytime job? Was she, as Elin predicted, able to get any girl she liked once moving to Stockholm?
And what about Elin's sister, is she still in Åmål?
And Agnes' mother, has she become less shallow as she has aged?
I'd also really like to learn of the fate of Victoria, the girl in the wheelchair. She came out the loser of the film; completely alienated and alone. But I know from my own life experience than being a wheelchair user can be particularly hard in your teens. So maybe things have changed a bit for Victoria as she aged? Maybe she has grown wiser, maybe she has found a place in life, too?
As is probably obvious by now, I'm quite open to any scenario here - as long as it's present day. Feel free to write a holiday story where you use Christmas as an excuse to take people back to Åmål and catch up. Or a reunion. Or anything, really! I'm just really curious as to what these people, who are approximately my own age, are up to today!
REQUEST 3: Home Alone (Movies)
I might as well admit it: I have a thing for holiday movies... I am able to tolerate much more tackiness, tonnes of cliches and suspend my disbelief for miles and miles whenever a story revolves around Christmas.
As a kid, I watched the Home Alone movies with Culkin in the lead, and I found them amusing. I rewatched the one taking place in New York recently and was still entertained, but found the movie wanting in some areas.
First of all: Why are all the active people in these films male? The creative kid, Kevin, is male. And the perseverant, if somewhat unskilled, thieves are males. The most prominent female is Kevin's mother, who's mostly just missing and worrying about her kid in a pretty passive way.
Also, I feel the film is pretty two dimensional in its depiction of the two thieves: They look like homeless people, but they're only "explained" as being evil thugs.
So what I would like is a new Home Alone holiday story that might satisfy my inner left wing liberal feminist! Can you genderswap the scenario somewhat for me, please? Make Kevin a girl and perhaps one or both of the thieves a woman? And offer up some backstory to the thieves and turn them into three-dimensional characters? Explain why they act the way they do? (Obviously, poverty plays a part.) Have them surprise us somehow by doing something that makes them more than just thugs?
REQUEST 4: Miss Marple - Agatha Christie
I love a good old mystery with a couple of red herrings thrown in there for good measure. And I always had a fondness for Miss Jane Marple. She uses people's prejudices about little old ladies (sweet, meek, fragile... etc.) to disguise the fact that she is sharp as a nail and able to spot bad guys before the police do. She is an excellent character reader and knows people everywhere.
However, I have been wondering about Jane's love life.
Still a Miss, not a Mrs... Has there really never been anyone? Perhaps another equally bright Miss Something? Maybe there still is?
Maybe Jane's old flame, who eventually married a man but is now widowed, needs Jane's help with a present-day mystery allowing them to rekindle?? And what will Jane's nephew think of all this? I can't wait to find out!
...Finally I just wish you good luck with your writing! And to assure you that really, my taste is pretty broad. I consider fan fiction a playground where pretty much anything is allowed - any genre hybrid, any kink, any imaginative scenario. It's all good fun, so I rarely take offense at anything I read. I suppose the best guideline is to say if you're having fun writing your story, I'll probably have fun reading it as well:)
Sincerely,
KateKane