Yuletide Letter 2017

[rosedamask]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you so much for writing for one of these fandoms! The fandoms I’ve requested this year are shows/movies that are hardwired to my heart, and I honestly do love all the characters featured here, so if we’ve matched on them, I’m sure I’ll love the story you would like to tell with them. If you already have something in mind and want to go ahead and write that, I’m really open for anywhere you’d like to go with these fandoms. But as always, I love getting a chance to flail about the things I’ve requested, so if you’d like a non-exhaustive guide to what I love about these fandoms and characters and some of the things I’d like to see in fic, here is my letter. I really hope there’s something here that inspires you, and that you have an amazing Yuletide this year!

General

Likes: fics of all ratings, fics of all lengths, all POVs/tenses, gen/het/slash/femslash, characters from everywhere on the moral spectrum, fairytale vibes, supernatural elements, introspection and character studies, characters as the driving force behind the plot, distinctive settings and worldbuilding, mythology, literary references and allusions, symbolism, characters going to hell and back for each other (literally or figuratively), hidden depths and dimensions (as both a character thing and a worldbuilding thing), love stories of all kinds, slow burns and slow builds, little details, hopeful endings (even for unconventional values of hopeful).

Smut Likes: first times, oral sex (especially cunnilingus and face-sitting), dirty talk and dialogue, bondage, non-lifestyle D/s, blindfolds, sensation play, holding hands during sex, wrists pinned to things, ordinarily restrained or composed characters getting wrecked, intimacy, vulnerability, characters who are really intense about what they want and overwhelmed when they get it, emotional intensity of all kinds, touch starvation, edging, body worship, bites and bruises, kissing, lingerie and other beautiful clothes, drawn-out undressing scenes, lavish amounts of touching and body contact.

DNWs: permanent character death, rape/noncon, pregnancy/kidfic, omegaverse, animal harm, issuefic and ace/aro/trans/non-binary headcanons, humiliation kink, extensive torture/mutilation.

Penny Dreadful (TV)
Ethan Chandler, Hecate Poole

I’d love more of Ethan and Hecate together, whether that’s another snippet of them raising demons under the desert sky, or something where they really did get a chance to carve out a new world together, or another kind of beast entirely.

Penny Dreadful has been one of the fandoms of my heart for a while now - it was just such a beautiful gothic cathedral of a show. I loved the aesthetic, and the poetry and the literariness, and the big cosmological melodramas, but what I loved most of all was how much compassion and affection this show had for all its monster weirdos, how committed it was to exploring what "we all have our curses, don't we?" meant to each of them and how they connected with each other as members of this demimonde. And, as one particular case study for this, I REALLY loved seeing Ethan and Hecate bounce off each other all through s2/s3.

Ethan is one of those characters that it's just ridiculously easy to fall in love with. I'm so fond of how subtle and low-key charming he can be as the domestic werewolf of Grandage Place, how this contrasts with his big tooth-and-claw destiny and his gunslinger persona, and how he balances his abject cynicism and his unswerving, wholehearted devotion to the people he loves. I love how he trades off "oh, fuck me" levels of Done With This Shit with this steady-eyed awareness of the sins at his back and how he fits into this universe, and as far as characters with a painful awareness of their place in the universe go, Hecate just makes me hurt inside in the best possible way. I love how she has an endless capacity for violence but also an endless capacity for vulnerability, and how she’s all cold porcelain distance on the outside with all this white-hot rage and longing underneath. I love how she's had all her fear and self-reproach burnt out of her as Evelyn’s daughter but can still occasionally seem so tentative and uncertain of herself when she’s around Ethan, and I love how this was just one of the unexpected things they brought out in one another when they were together.

As a relationship, I was pretty much bowled over by them together ever since they were sizing each other up in that cafe, with Hecate so beautifully startled when Ethan tries to wipe away that smudge of dirt and Ethan already kind of knowing what calibre of murder kitten he’s dealing with here but wanting to play with her anyway ("I think those brigands better watch out for you, Hecate Aphrodite Livingstone"). And then they got that road trip! I loved all the ways they connected as predators and outcasts in s3, and how their arc ultimately came down to that very tender and mutually devoted "you saved my life" scene at the Talbot ranch that was revelatory for both of them. Right behind the death of Vanessa, the death of Hecate is something I was actively disappointed in by the end of s3, because OH MAN, they deserved better after all that. I'd be ridiculously happy with anything that gave me more of them, and like I said in my request, I would welcome any approach you want to take, but for some more specific prompts:

• I would be SO INTO any kind of post-s3 fic where Hecate is resurrected, or reaches out from the afterlife, or where Ethan derails his adventures with Malcolm to march down to hell and rescue her from the master she never truly got to choose.


• Or, for a mid-s3 AU, I would love a fic where Hecate survives the night at the ranch and it's the beginning of Ethan and Hecate on the road to being the prom king and queen of hell. What would it be like if they ruled the darkness together instead of (or even together with) Vanessa and Dracula? Would it be glorious and transformational like Hecate believed it would be, or is it still something fraught and painful for them both? Are they the end of days, or does this attempt to create a new world for themselves lead somewhere else somehow?


• Alternatively, I'd also really love a mid-s3 AU where Hecate survived the ranch and she and Ethan somehow returned to London together with Malcolm. Because oh my GOD, just give me ALL of the "Ethan brings home a witch girlfriend and no one approves, but damned if he lets that stop him." I love that Hecate is so prickly and unrepentant, but I'd also be fascinated to see whether a post-coven Hecate could actually get drawn into another fold of demonically-touched misfits, and how this would change everything she has with Ethan.


• Going further back, I'd also be enchanted and terrified in the best possible way by anything that explored what might have happened if Ethan never left for America after s2. Does Hecate somehow persuade him to go on a very different kind of road trip with her - like a monster tour of Europe with balls and fangs and fabulous scenery and disarming each other at every turn? Do they get to have more teeth-baring cafe dates in London, or get to hang out somewhere where he really does get to see what she’s like in a steeplechase?


• Smut/PWP/Yuleporn: I adore all the ways sex and supernatural resonances and character studies are brought together on this show, so ABSOLUTELY YES if you'd like to go there with Ethan and Hecate. I’d love to see an extended version of the cavesex scene, or an AU coda to their stay at the ranch where they end up licking the blood off one another in a pristine white bedroom, or a witchy sex ritual, or any other direction you'd like to take them here. I love everything about their physicality, and how they can go from splitting the world in two to startling each other with these quiet, careful touches, and there's so many ways I'd love to see this contrast explored this way. Does Ethan ever go in for body worship/scar appreciation with Hecate in her nightcomer form? Hecate can withstand all kinds of world-ending, apocalyptic violence and has the scars to prove it, but is she always utterly blindsided by any measure of gentleness? What's it like for Ethan to have somebody so unflinchingly into werewolf viscera?

The Red Shoes (1948)
Boris Lermontov, Vicky Page

From "I am that horror" all the way through to "life is so unimportant," I was so fascinated by the dynamic between these two. I'd love to see anything that explored this further, either as gen or Vicky/Lermontov with boundaries between obsessive protocols blurring everywhere.

So, I saw this movie for the first time back at the beginning of the year, and was deeply unsurprised by how much I loved it: it's so lush and intelligent, and so easy to be captivated by. I adored the fairytale atmosphere, and the way poky wet theatres with skipping records could melt into the twilight world of Swan Lake, and the completely justifiable number of tiaras worn at parties. And above all, I loved the balance between the vivid storybook narrative and the way the movie sketches out its characters, with a really particular place in my heart for Vicky and Lermontov.

I love Vicky's passion and drive, and how she can't keep away from the ballet shoes she hides in the cavern of her honeymoon suite. But I also adore the hint of steely pragmatism we get when she tells Julian that it's hard enough to get off the ground without being a bird or a flower, and the dry-tart spikes of humour that makes her hit Lermontov with "I am that horror" and keep a caricature of him in a frame on her dressing room table. She's fabulous in a like-something-from-a-fable kind of way, but also just delightfully personable. Likewise, with Lermontov, I love how well he fills out the silhouette of a flail-handed impresario, with lots of poise and wit and popcorn.gif faces when he's watching rehearsal drama, but I also love how terribly sincere he seems to be when he calls his corps de ballet his family and how warmly he can soothe over all the mini-catastrophes of an opening night. For somebody that confident about the plus points of ignoring human nature, there's a lot of layers under those thoroughly excellent dressing gowns, and I'm especially here for how they complicate things between him and Vicky.

They're beautifully archetypal together as an impresario-ingénue thing, but I'm also really fascinated by the hints that it's been personal ever since they met queuing for champagne cocktails. I love the strange theatrical domesticity they have during rehearsals (that beat where he drapes the towel over her neck!), and all the big mirror-cracking moments of frustration and longing, the way they never quite meet their match like that again, and all the unlikely ways they keep bringing out these weird human flourishes in each other as well as all mutually inspiring a lot of artistic excesses and ecstasies. I'd love to see anything that explored their dynamic more, whether it's as the intense but indefinable thing it is in the movie or whether it's all-out Vicky/Lermontov. I'm here for seeing them framed against all the ballet productions, all the parties, and all the travelogues, wherever you'd like to take them, but for some prompts:

• I’d love an AU where Vicky doesn't end up under the train and gets to dance The Red Shoes again. It could be part of an epic career retrospective fic that explores what might happen afterwards, what she and Lermontov create together and how their partnership changes over a series of ballet productions, or it could be a little scene of them talking together backstage after the curtain call of The Red Shoes - it would all be amazing. Basically, I'd just really love to see anything where Vicky comes through the other side of her cautionary tale, with Lermontov there with her to celebrate her triumph and/or commiserate with how this will change her, however you'd like to tell it.


• Having said that, I love the eerie ghost ballet that actually happens at the end of the movie, with nothing but stage lights where Vicky should be. If you'd like to do something set post-movie, I'd be so into anything exploring Lermontov’s hauntedness that this is my exception to permanent character death as a DNW. (Although something that went full Giselle with actual ghosts would also be AMAZING.)


• I kind of think they'd make a jaw-droppingly formidable pair of (future) old marrieds, and for shameless Vicky/Lermontov canon divergence, I would be SO VERY HERE for anything where this happens. Maybe some kind of AU where Lermontov proposes to her at some point during her courtship with Julian, offering her marriage on different terms rather than risk losing her anyone who could seriously derail her career?


• Missing scenes and lost moments! Tell me what Lermontov's unwritten letter would have said, or what the rest of Vicky’s train journey back to life as a ballerina was like, or how it went in rehearsals for Coppelia, or anything else that you can think of, and I'd love to see it expanded on in fic.


• Smut/PWP/Yuleporn: I am so absolutely not going to argue with the beautiful Yuletide tradition of old movie smut, especially when these two are so weirdly ABOUT ecstasy and control and religious-level investment in the body already in a sliiightly different context and it's entirely wonderful. Does a moment at the barre goes strange and tangly? Does Vicky maybe ever try making a case for the doubtful comforts of human love in a way that devastates everyone? Do they ever have a frantic, compulsive moment in the wings during a show? You can absolutely LAY IT ALL OUT THERE. (And seriously, there is no question mark at all over how delighted I would be if ballet costumes and/or white tie were involved here.)

Twin Peaks
Audrey Horne, Dale Cooper

I'd love anything where these two beautiful noir kids get to be happy together, whether it's an epic that gives their bond a redemptive place in the Twin Peaks universe, or a glimpse into any possible moment of connection between them, as dreamy or as jazzy or as sexy as you want to make it. (Full disclosure: I ship it like burning, but if you're not comfortable with writing full-on Audrey/Cooper, you can ODAO for that - anything that actively sinks them as a ship would be a DNW, but otherwise, I love everything about their relationship on every level.)

THIS SHOW, MAN. I watched it for the first time earlier this year, and fell for it so hard in that way you sometimes do where it feels like you’ve always loved this fandom, you just didn't know it until now. Fast forward to Yuletide, and now here I am trying to think of a way of sketching in what I like about it without reverting to deeply unhelpful commentary like "I have never been so into watching people mysteriously fondle curtains in my entire life." There are so many things I love about this world, from the neo-noir time warp atmosphere to the red velvet hellworld magical realism to the loving, lingering slow-burn character studies. And I love a lot of the characters in this bar, but one of the biggest things that hooked me under the ribs was the unaccountable loveliness of Audrey and Cooper at every turn.

I love how, in a story about secret lives, Audrey is so beguilingly guileless. She unapologetically is who she is, and yet there's so much that makes her who she is that she still feels like she belongs right at the heart of this big, mysterious universe. I love her dreaminess and determination, her intelligence and the integrity that comes from her burn-down-the-forest levels of intensity. I love her staring into coffee cups like they're crystal balls, and how beautifully earnest and fearless she is when she’s chasing down everything she wants in life. That balance between earnestness and otherworldliness is also something I find entirely fascinating and endearing in Cooper, and I'm kind of endlessly INTO the way his cool acceptance of things like jazzy eldritch speakeasies contrasts with how adorably overwhelmed he is by little things from consensus reality (like the sight of ducks on a lake, OF ALL PLACES). I love the tension between his slicked-back composure and how many impossible feelings he has about almost everything, and the way he's somehow settled on a signature #aesthetic that makes him look like a selkie drawn by J. C. Leyendecker. He's gentle and folksy but also sharp as a pin and a little perverse, and I love all the ways his warmth and his remoteness play off each other, especially when he's hit with Audrey.

They've been my bulletproof OTP for this show ever since Cooper stood up from that breakfast table like the universe went reeling away from him the moment he saw Audrey (and then, like, introduced himself to her title-first, in a voice that's basically the aural equivalent of finger-guns). I love how much they just light each other up whenever they're together, how Audrey wants Cooper with such passion and clarity and purpose, and how Cooper kind of irresistibly ends up serving Grace Kelly levels of snow-covered-volcano yearning around Audrey. They're both a little out of place in the world in a very "I feel like at least 50% of their respective parenting and socialization was probably done by an old movie channel" kind of way, but they always seem to see the things they wholeheartedly value in one another, the beautiful and the intelligent and the desirable, and I'm forever wrecked over the way their relationship plays out with affection and admiration and strangeness and charm.

I'd love anything with more of that dynamic, and there are SO MANY ways this could go. They could talk more over fries and malts! They could solve mysteries or save the world! They could slow dance to an Aleister Crowley remix of The Flamingos in the Black Lodge! They could have impossibly beautiful first time sex under an inevitable antler accent piece in the Great Northern! I would love it all, but for more prompts:

• I don't even know HOW to start with Twin Peaks: The Return without this whole letter turning into a wall of WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING, but: I'm still not over the shoutout to Audrey's red stilettos appearing as part of Cooper's most emotionally charged and most narrative breakthrough moment. Now we're at the point where everything is very "what matters is what you ~believe happens," I believe they still call out to each other, and I'd love anything post-TPTR where they're reunited. For Audrey's storyline, I'm deeply into the hints she's also been trapped in the Black Lodge somehow, and I would be really fascinated by anything which played around with that - encounters she might have had with Cooper (and the Billy thing as a screen memory for them?), or an AU where they left the Lodge together, or something where this eventually helps them save each other. Also, if you'd like to do something AU with present day Cooper stuck in the forest in 1989, I'd read ALL the time travel tropes for these two.


• I am so absolutely into the dark, twisty mythology around Twin Peaks and their place in it. As I said in my letter, I would like something where they get happiness together, but if you want to go full Lynch fairytale along the way, that would be beyond amazing. Give me all the questing and imprisonment and giants and kisses that end curses set to an endless Black Lodge jazz soundtrack and I'll love it all.


• Any kind of slow burn how-they-got-together fic would go straight to my heart. It could be post-TPTR futurefic set after the universe has somehow stabilized again, or something for the original series that goes AU when Cooper gets Audrey back from One-Eyed Jack's, or anything else you can come up with. Maybe Cooper leaves Twin Peaks when he's supposed to but Audrey invites herself along for the road trip, or maybe Audrey never makes it up to One-Eyed Jack's at the end of s1, and things play out differently then - if this is the kind of thing you'd like to do, I’d be beyond thrilled to read any of it.


• I already love all the retro aesthetics of the show, and I'd be terrifyingly into a historical AU set a little earlier in the twentieth century. Especially an actual 1940s smoky noir, or anything with the Horne family delivering Edith Wharton levels of Gilded Age drama (I don't know exactly what Cooper would be doing with his life in this era, but I present http://yesterdays-print.com/post/162259047609/reading-times-pennsylvania-october-14-1915 without comment).


• Audrey and Cooper are also the kind of characters where I want to know all the little details of their lives, and want to see them finding out all about each other, so any kind of intimate standalone scene with them would be ENTIRELY my thing. If you'd be up for doing something granular like that, I'd love to hear all about what a date night would look like for them, with lots of atmosphere and dialogue, or what their pillow talk would sound like, or what kind of old Hollywood conspiracy theories they share.


• Smut/PWP/Yuleporn: I would be so into this, you have NO IDEA. I'd love to see Cooper have as many opinions about good foreplay practice as he does about everything else and be determined to make Audrey aware of all of them, or an endlessly tender first time/loss of virginity scene where Audrey's just beautifully touch-starved and overwhelmed, or something where Audrey sets out to make Cooper lose his entire mind. I love their intensity with one another, I love Cooper's precision and focus on pinpoint pleasures, I love the little flashes of insight we get into Audrey’s id and the way she glows around Cooper even when they're fully clothed with several inches distance between them, and would love to see any of this reframed in this vein. Is Cooper a compulsive talker in bed, and just how dirty does it get? Does Audrey ever grab a cube from a room service ice bucket and try to demonstrate what she means when she talks about a hot cold, or convince Cooper to try something she saw at One-Eyed Jack’s? HERE FOR IT ALL.

But whichever fandom we're matched on, thank you so much for writing for me this Yuletide. I really hope that you enjoy writing something with these characters, and that you get an entirely lovely fic of your own. I'm so excited to see you on the other side, and in the meantime, you have all my gratitude and good vibes being sent your way.