dear yuletide writer 2016
likes | dislikes | clouds of sils maria | the yellow wallpaper | we have always lived in the castle
and if you'd like to read my letter in light format, click here.
likes:
I like intense relationships (whether they be gen or shippy), especially if they border on codependent. I also like people who don't know or like each other getting pushed together by circumstances beyond their control. I like missing scenes, pre-canon, and canon divergence - things that are close to the tone of canon - and worldbuilding. I love, love darkfic - darker twists on canon, unhappy endings, and so on. Gore and body horror are fine and good as long as they're not the main focus of the story!
more specific Crueltide likes: body horror/dysmorphia (e.g. not recognizing self in mirror), skewed perceptions/doubting sanity, creepy mirrors, gaslighting, uncanny valley, psychological horror, people "coming back wrong", whump and H/C, PTSD. (This isn't exhaustive, but should give you some stuff to work off if you want to write darkfic!)
dislikes:
I'd rather not get porn, non-canon AUs, or crossovers/fusions this Yuletide - sorry if that's what you were planning on writing! I've also listed some incest ships as possibilities in my prompts - if you go with that I only ask that you don't make it super lighthearted/blase about the incest; I generally go for incest ships because of the fucked-up-ness/darkfic potential!
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clouds of sils maria
Valentine: At twenty, you saw Sigrid's ambition, and you saw her violence because you felt it in yourself.
Maria: So?
Valentine: So, that's what I'm saying. The text is like an object. It's going to change perspective based on where you're standing.
Characters: Maria Enders, Valentine
This movie is so interesting. Many things are never explained fully - or at all. I love the way that the play, Maloja Snake, is never seen in its entirety, only in pieces here and there, and the parallels between it and Maria and Valentine's relationship. And the perspective on acting, rehearsing, what it means to be an actor, is fascinating. My favorite part of it is Valentine and Maria and their strange relationship. Fighting, running lines together, skinny dipping...They both embody Sigrid and Helena in different ways. It's a complex relationship and it feels very real.
I'm interested in these two both as a ship and platonically, so feel free to write either!
Prompt ideas:
- slice of life before the events of the movie - what was their relationship like then? how did they meet?
- something from Valentine's perspective - maybe what happened with her boyfriend that she doesn't tell Maria, or what happens when she disappears?
- what happened to Valentine? (feel free to go dark with this if you're feeling it)
- something involving Maloja Snake
- maybe nothing bad happened to Valentine, she just disappeared - what if she and Maria cross paths years later?
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the yellow wallpaper
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.
Characters: Narrator
I adore everything about this story. It's so effectively creepy, but with such a cheerful tone to it - which ends up just adding to the creepiness. There are all these little details that make everything so horrifying. Why is the bed bolted to the floor? Why are there scratches on the walls, and why is the wallpaper already partly ripped when the narrator gets there? Especially if it's a children's playroom as she thinks. But you also never really know what's really happening and what's only in her mind.
(ETA: I've been told that I wasn't particularly clear about this - I am familiar with the background, context, and significance of this story. But in terms of fic the things that are most interesting to me are the atmosphere and the sense of the narrator not being able to trust her own senses - which is why my prompts have to do with more literal interpretations of what the narrator experiences.)
I didn't request her husband, John, or the nurse, Jennie, but if you want to include them that's fine! I'm just mostly interested in the narrator.
Prompt ideas:
- the narrator escapes from the room and finds out what's going on
- a day in the life
- what was her life like before the events of the story? was there some precipitating event that caused her husband to bring her there?
- the supernatural aspects of the story are really happening - what happens next?
- on the other hand, maybe it's all in her head and she just goes further out of her mind
- did she, as she thinks at the end, actually come out of the wallpaper?
- she recovers (or "recovers" and the things she sees are real) and looks back on her time in the room years later
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we have always lived in the castle
Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh, no, said Merricat, you'll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep.
Characters: Merricat Blackwood, Constance Blackwood
This was the first Shirley Jackson novel I read, and I think it's still my favorite. It doesn't ease the reader into the weird, dark story - it starts right out with Merricat doing errands in town and thinking about murdering everyone. But she's so matter of fact about this, and her family's deaths (at her hand) that it almost seems normal. As does her weird living situation with Connie, even at the end. It's like a dark version of the Boxcar Kids - the two of them living alone and unbothered, making the best of things. In their half-burned house, wearing tablecloths for dresses.
Prompt ideas:
- Merricat and Connie as young children
- what happens after the end? do they ever rejoin society or go into town?
- (totally optional since it doesn't involve nommed characters) outside POV of how they're perceived by the town, or a local legend/ghost story about them
- what happened the night Merricat poisoned their family? did something happen that she or Constance never told each other?
- Merricat/Connie? (I'd prefer no abusive Merricat or Connie being threatened into it if you go with this - I prefer them as unbalanced but equally enthused about their life/situation, whether you're doing gen or pairing.)
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