A belated message to my yuletide seekrit santa
Dear Secret Santa
Thanks for being so patient while I got my life back under control. I'm sorry if the wait has messed you around.
First, thank you! It will be lovely to get a fic-present, and I will treasure it. And please, write what you want how you want to. I'll get much more enjoyment from something written with all the investment and love that comes from following your muse, than from something you've thrown together out of a sense that you have an obligation to tick items off the checklist of my preferences.
However, if you're the sort of writer who enjoys writing to prompts or within parameters, or you want something to help you choose between two options you like equally well, here's some stuff about my likes and dislikes.
I'm actually pretty omnivorous. In general I care more about good writing, clever ideas or approaches, and convincing characterisation than I do about whether a fic is gen, het or slash (I don't have to personally agree with an interpretation of character or canon to find a presentation of it convincing in its fic context). I'm an old school fan for whom porn is something that sometimes turns up in fic rather the purpose of it (which isn't to say I won't thoroughly enjoy a sizzling hot pwp if that's your thing! Especially if it's a Goodies threesome). I particularly enjoy fic that makes me see something new, or in a new way, in the canon source material; I like being surprised. I'm a feminist and an intellectual, and enjoy being pandered to on those fronts; on the other hand my inner teenager secretly wants to read buckets and buckets of h/c cavefic. I'm a great big soppy really, but have a bit of a literary kink for feelings that remain unspoken, and true love that remains undeclared; fic that works through the effects of social and personal power dynamics on characters' emotional lives really speaks to me. Even things I'm generally not so keen on - straightforward het romance obeying romance genre conventions, for example - I do enjoy when they're well done as a pure example of genre and even more so when they put a clever twist on a cliche. I'm trained and have worked as an academic historian, and do creative anachronism for a hobby, so I equally adore fic that takes a historicist focus on detail and style to an almost fetishistic level, and fic that either engages ironically with canons of historical accuracy or else just treats them as an excuse for a glorious romp. I like angst and despair almost as much as I love comedy and hard-won happy endings.
There are only two things that I can think of that I have absolutely no interest in reading. The first is explicit sex scenes for characters who aren't adults by modern standards. Of course, I've requested two texts set in the middle ages, and I'm very aware that ideas about age and consent were different then. But my brain clings resolutely to modern norms in its refusal to go there - knowing the fact is different from having any interest in the detail. My other personal problem area is RPF, though I suppose I should clarify that I don't consider the three men called Graeme, Tim and Bill who live in an office in Cricklewood breeding giant kittens and battling killer mimes and whatnot to be real people just because they share names with three British comedians, and I also don't think that Charlemagne in The Song of Roland or Bernard Gui in The Name of the Rose count as real people in that sense either. I'm sorry, I've never quite figured out why my brain gets so upset about RPF about contemporary people, but there you go. And it's not even very cut and dried - I enjoy some sorts of self-conscious metafic that border on RPF.
So anyway, Santa, enjoy the writing! I look forward to the reading.
Thanks for being so patient while I got my life back under control. I'm sorry if the wait has messed you around.
First, thank you! It will be lovely to get a fic-present, and I will treasure it. And please, write what you want how you want to. I'll get much more enjoyment from something written with all the investment and love that comes from following your muse, than from something you've thrown together out of a sense that you have an obligation to tick items off the checklist of my preferences.
However, if you're the sort of writer who enjoys writing to prompts or within parameters, or you want something to help you choose between two options you like equally well, here's some stuff about my likes and dislikes.
I'm actually pretty omnivorous. In general I care more about good writing, clever ideas or approaches, and convincing characterisation than I do about whether a fic is gen, het or slash (I don't have to personally agree with an interpretation of character or canon to find a presentation of it convincing in its fic context). I'm an old school fan for whom porn is something that sometimes turns up in fic rather the purpose of it (which isn't to say I won't thoroughly enjoy a sizzling hot pwp if that's your thing! Especially if it's a Goodies threesome). I particularly enjoy fic that makes me see something new, or in a new way, in the canon source material; I like being surprised. I'm a feminist and an intellectual, and enjoy being pandered to on those fronts; on the other hand my inner teenager secretly wants to read buckets and buckets of h/c cavefic. I'm a great big soppy really, but have a bit of a literary kink for feelings that remain unspoken, and true love that remains undeclared; fic that works through the effects of social and personal power dynamics on characters' emotional lives really speaks to me. Even things I'm generally not so keen on - straightforward het romance obeying romance genre conventions, for example - I do enjoy when they're well done as a pure example of genre and even more so when they put a clever twist on a cliche. I'm trained and have worked as an academic historian, and do creative anachronism for a hobby, so I equally adore fic that takes a historicist focus on detail and style to an almost fetishistic level, and fic that either engages ironically with canons of historical accuracy or else just treats them as an excuse for a glorious romp. I like angst and despair almost as much as I love comedy and hard-won happy endings.
There are only two things that I can think of that I have absolutely no interest in reading. The first is explicit sex scenes for characters who aren't adults by modern standards. Of course, I've requested two texts set in the middle ages, and I'm very aware that ideas about age and consent were different then. But my brain clings resolutely to modern norms in its refusal to go there - knowing the fact is different from having any interest in the detail. My other personal problem area is RPF, though I suppose I should clarify that I don't consider the three men called Graeme, Tim and Bill who live in an office in Cricklewood breeding giant kittens and battling killer mimes and whatnot to be real people just because they share names with three British comedians, and I also don't think that Charlemagne in The Song of Roland or Bernard Gui in The Name of the Rose count as real people in that sense either. I'm sorry, I've never quite figured out why my brain gets so upset about RPF about contemporary people, but there you go. And it's not even very cut and dried - I enjoy some sorts of self-conscious metafic that border on RPF.
So anyway, Santa, enjoy the writing! I look forward to the reading.