Hey Yule Person!
Dear Yuletide Writer:
So I’m brand-new to the wonders of Yuletide. But I’m pretty excited to be playing, and I hope you’ll enjoy doing the writing.
Here are some of the basics about me
What I like: relationships, angst, romance, humor, character studies, and lots and lots of feelings. Each of the fandoms that I’ve chosen contain particular pairings that I really groove on. If you stick close to the relationship dynamics, I’ll be very happy. I love AUs, particularly if they’re really alternative-I’m a fan of science fiction and fantasy, so setting one of these very real-world fics in a universe like that would be wonderful to me. I’m less interested in real-world alternative universes, but if you can make it work in a way that illuminates the characters, that’ll please me, too. And holiday stories are perfectly fine; I haven’t yet outgrown watching Christmas specials on TV every year. Then again, the character pairings I've chosen are so basically angsty that I can't imagine them frolicking with egg nog. But if you can, have at it
What I hate: hard-core smut and violence, out-of-character portrayals, and sex scenes that aren’t arising from genuine emotion in the story.
Here’s more about the specific fandoms that I requested:
Request #1: The Good Wife - Alicia Florrick and Kalinda Sharma
I'd be crazy for an Alicia/Kalinda fic in which Alicia finally gets how much Kalinda actually loves her, and simultaneously realizes that she feels some of that for Kalinda as well. If you manage to pull off this very, very difficult thing in whatever setting you like-they can be astronauts on an expedition to Mars, for all I care-I’ll be forever in your debt. Bonus points if you can work Elsbeth Tascioni into the mix.
Alicia and Kalinda have one of the most complex, fascinating relationships that I’ve ever seen portrayed about two women on television. I see them as a romantic pairing that’s all but a narrative necessity for "The Good Wife": they’re not just a fun subtext ship, but (as far as I’m concerned) they’re canon. Kalinda has been clearly in love with Alicia almost from the start of the show, and because Alicia is Alicia, she’s found it impossible to see that. Watching them tentatively work themselves back into some semblance of a friendship after their season two rift has been agonizing, and any fic that can go well beyond their current canon relationship iwould please me enormously.
Request #2: The Outsiders - Johnny Cade and Dallas Winston
I would really enjoy reading a fic exploring the idea that Johnny and Dallas were actually in love with each other. You can take this one wherever you like--it can remain something that the characters themselves aren't fully aware of yet, or you can turn it into a full-fledged affair. I'm not interested in a detailed M-rated sexually explicit fic as much as I am in exploring the strong feelings that these two characters had for one another.
Like practically every middle school kid in the world, I read and loved the novels of S. E. Hinton, particularly The Outsiders. It was only much later, as an adult, that it hit me just how much gay subtext there was in that novel--it's simply loaded with it, and that's probably a big reason why this book about boys has always been so compelling to adolescent girls. I love the relationship between Johnny and Dallas, and it strikes me that so much of the book makes even more sense if we understand the two of them to have been genuinely in love with one another: what they had seems to me to go beyond the buddy bromance trope. If you can portray all that while remaining true to the spirit of the novel, you'll have really accomplished something.
Request #3: Homeland - Carrie Mathison and Nicholas Brody
I’m really craving an angsty fic in which Carrie and Brody’s crazy chemistry with each other comes to the fore. I’m much more interested in a psychological exploration of these two broken souls (and how they each recognize the brokenness of the other) than I am in sexy timz, although feel free to go there if the psychological setup seems right for the moment. I love Saul too, and if you can work him in somehow (maybe by having him realize what Carrie and Brody potentially are to each other), that would be great. I also have a kind of crazy fantasy about Brody's wife Jessica having a conversation with Carrie about Brody, and if you could get THAT in there, you''ll be my hero.
I know, I know: Homeland is a tense political thriller, not a soap opera. Still, I’m completely fascinated by just how fucked up Carrie and Brody both are, and how that fucked-up-ness draws them to one another. It might be akin to nineteenth-century melodrama, but I can’t get enough of it. Underneath their cat-and-mouse games is a twisted kind of love, along with a knowledge that nobody in their world can understand them quite as well as they understand each other. If you can manage to capture that very complex dynamic in a fic, I’ll be eternally in your debt.
I guess that’s it. This is exciting! I can’t wait to meet you and see what you come up with for me. Have a great holiday season!