To my Yuletide Fairy of 2019
...all I want for Yuletide 2019 is this to believe in feminism, queer romance and crip rebellion while having a big mug of Christmas cheer ;)
Dearest Yuletide Writer!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for offering one of the crazy rare fandoms I've wished for this year!
I'm honestly more excited about you writing for me than about Christmas itself. I'm the only queer person in my family and often feel a bit out of place during family get-togethers, so Yuletide is almost like a life line for me. Knowing that someone out there is a nerdy as me and is sending me a bit of home-written non-normativity on Christmas morning... it makes the entire season better.
No matter what kind of story you write for me, just knowing that you did is a gift in and of itself. So thank you!
This Yuletide letter hopefully makes your job a bit easier. Of course, it's all optional - if your plot bunnies take you elsewhere, feel free to follow them.
Looking forward to reading your story!
- KateKane
Work Text:
General likes and dislikes:
I avoid stories containing incest, non-con or beastiality. I also avoid 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! Also, these days everyone in my circuit of friends seems to be getting knocked up, so please avoid pregnancy storylines. I'm not too fond of crack fic either.
I adore stories that offer feministy, queer and crip twists on canon. I love stories depicting strong female characters and relationship and/or romances between strong female characters. I love it when disabilities are just there, as part of the story, not something to be overcome.
To me, fan fiction is a great place for rebellion! So I find it empowering when a heteronormative canon is moulded into a femslash romance, I love it when an innocent and fragile woman of the canon turns out to be less innocent and fragile, I love it when a character with a disability breaks stereotypes and doesn't have to be neither pitiful or a supercrip. I also love imaginative cross-overs, as long as they stay true to the psychology of the characters. Basically - fan fiction is your playground, and if you put a bit of female/queer/crip empowerment and Christmas sap in there, I'll cheer all the way to New Year's Eve!
About my specific requests...
REQUEST 1: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
DNWs: No underage sex (young Helen and Jane might kiss; for the rest they'd have to grow up a bit!), no non-con.
I love "Jane Eyre", but feel like some of its female characters deserve more.
Like, did Jane's only friend, Helen, really have to die so young? Did she have to die at all?? Couldn't their relationship be a bit more fleshed out? Couldn't it have lasted? Blossomed? Like, they're two orphaned girls in a misogynist age - they'd have to venture out in the world as allies.
And then there's Bertha, locked in the attic because her husband cannot cope with her. She's treated as an obstacle preventing Jane from marrying her beau - the issue being that he is already married. But is it not a bigger issue that he has locked his wife in the attic? Is Bertha really truly mad - or is she perhaps merely not the kind of submissive wife he wanted? What if Jane got to know Bertha? What if Bertha made Jane see her life and romantic options in a new light?
I would really like a feministy twist or two on this old classic :) And I don't care whether Jane ends up with Mr. Rochester or not; I think he's a bit of a douchebag, really.
REQUEST 2: Heidi - Johanna Spyri
DNWs: No sex. This is a childhood universe for me.
As a child, I had the story of Heidi read to me many times. I liked the universe a lot, but growing up with Muscular Dystrophy I felt uneasy about the quick-fix to Heidi's friend Clara's disability: Heidi basically scares Clara into walking. As if that's even possible! And as if the ability to walk is a prerequisite for a happy ending.
I would like the story about Heidi and Clara rewritten, so that there is no magic cure for Clara. Perhaps she gets pissed off when Heidi tries to trick her into walking? Perhaps they discover ways of playing together that do not require walking? Perhaps, through helping each other, through interdependence, they're great together? Perhaps Heidi can help Clara with physical stuff, while Clara can help Heidi with something else? Perhaps they can handle the ableism of their village together - if someone, say grandfather, feels sorry for Clara or acts condescendingly, they can get back at them?
In short: Make the 8 year old version of me happy. Give me a Clara that *keeps* her disability - and has awesome adventures with Heidi *with* this disability. Bonus for Christmas fluff and mischief!
REQUEST 3: Pippi Långstrump | Pippi Longstocking (TV 1969)
DNWs: No underage sex... feel free to give Prussiluskan a sex life, but you don't have to be graphic about it. At Pippi and Annika's age, I think kissing is a far as they'd go.
I watched the Swedish tv show as a kid (in a dubbed-to-Danish 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 "Prussiluskan". For one, she wanted Pippi to go into a children's home instead of putting her trust 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, dear Yuletide Write!
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? Perhaps she bonds with Pippi? Perhaps she is not desperate for a man - perhaps she is completely uninterested in one and doing very well without?
In short: Please give this woman literary redemption and make my inner feminist happy!!
Also, I always thought Annika had an innocent admiration crush on Pippi. Feel free to put that in somewhere too ;)
Bonus for anything Christmas themed! I'm a sucker for Holiday fluff.
REQUEST 4: Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman
DNWs: I'm a lesbian through and through, and while I do think Sully and Michaela are an OTP, I do not want to hear graphic details of their sex life.
Watching Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman is my guilty pleasure. I have turned to that show during hard periods of my own life. I actually bought the dvd shoebox while recovering from a depression. I love how love, the good, empathy always win on this show - I wish real life was the same way.
The show deals with many minority issues - racism, poverty, gender roles, being nerdy, having asthma... But LGBT issues were barely touched upon. Yes, Brian does hang out with Walt Whitman in one episode, and we see that Sully is a lot more cool with this than Michaela, presumably because he has learned about different genders and sexualities from the Cheyenne.
But - I would very much like a story in which LGBT issues hit a little closer to home for our OTP: Sully and Michaela have a biological daughter together at one point. When she gets older - maybe she's trans or a lesbian? How would Sully and Michaela (and her children) handle that? How would Cloud Dancing maybe help them come to terms with this?
In short: I would love a story about parental acceptance of queerness set in this universe. Nothing could ever be too cheesy here. I'm down for Christmas caroling, a girl insisting on being a male Santa, the discussion of gender appropriate Christmas presents, a girl giving another girl a romantic present... Just put me in a queer-accepting Holiday mood!