Yuletide 2010
Dear Yuletider,
First: yuletide is the best and you are the best and I am so excited for whatever you write me. Presents are the best. In case the specific request for the fandom we matched on makes you want to put pins in your eyes rather than write it, I've included some extra information and resources on all of them.
I know the following seems both weirdly specific and kind of vague, which is because I tend to view stories as a bunch of feelings and ideas happening rather than a bunch of things happening. I'll always pick feelings over plot, given the choice.
Some things I like in fiction:
- Stories about ladies! The way women experience and transmit that experience. The way that women can shape their worlds and be shaped by them.
- Stories about stories. The way we make meaning out of stuff happening and the weight that stories carry. The fact that things need not have happened to be true. How and why and who we tell them to.
- Stories about deep and complex relationships. Growth and change and depth of feeling in relationships, be they romantic or platonic. The fact that the line between those two things can get blurred. Second selves and dark mirrors.
Some things I really do not like:
- Sausagefests
- First or second person POV
- Unremitting angst and unearned perfect endings
- Intractable destiny and meaningless personal choice
Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland/Narnia. Please. The very first time I saw this movie this popped into my head, and it has not left.
Mirana has this enormous creepy potential, and in a lot of ways I see her as this strange mirror to Jadis. She tries to set up her conflict with her sister as a very straightforward good/evil affair, and it's really really not. And, you know, Alice shares with the Pevensies this enormous and terrible sense of having had the depth and meaning of the magical world and then having had it taken away. How does it affect her? Not only that, but she was the White Queen's favourite, and, well, so was Edmund.
Feel free to fuck around with continuity! I have no specific desires wrt what actually happens in the fic.
If a crossover is Too Much, I would super love a fic about the moral ambiguity of Alice's combat and what it's like to lose the magical world again. Does she go the lipsticks and nylons route? The picking fights with strangers route? Something else entirely? I also think there's something to be said here about writing stories and how the stories we tell ourselves are sometimes more important and significant than what actually happened.
Resources: For my feelings on narnia, try my narnia tag: specifically this post where I talk about Growing Up and hero angst or the fic where i exploded all my feelings. Narnia acts as a locus for a lot of my feelings on childhood storytelling, so even if you're not writing the crossover the tag may still be of use to you.
Aphra Behn RPF
I'm writing my thesis partially on long 18th century women poets.Aphra Behn comes up a lot! I find it fascinating the way other women poets kind of gathered around her and wrote stuff about her---she was like this lighting rod for women's writing (and, kind of, their desire). There's something very proto rpf-y to be about the way they wrote about her. Honestly, I have very little of the actual historical background here--I have no idea if these ladies like hung out together or what. So feel free to make shit up.
I also find it really fascinating how the Bloomsbury group took her on and how Vita Sackville West and Virginia Woolf talked about her writing and desire in the context of their own writings and desires. Maybe a fic split across the centuries? But that's a whole other level of remix/historical crossover and I totally get if you don't want to go there.
Basically, I just want a story about ladies and friendship and writing and maybe making out. And High Wit, obviously.
Resources:
- Germaine Greer's Kissing the Rod has a bunch of poems by AB's circle. You can probs find it in the library.
- Failing that, Google Books has a bunch of scans of first editions and things, if you search by author.
- Behn's Wikipedia page has a list of biographies.
- Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own" contains Woolf's opinions on Behn and women's writings. There's an online edition here
Mirrormask
As you can probably tell from my first request, I am really fascinated by stories about stories and about girlhood and growing up. Mirrormask in a lot of ways is this very meta piece of storytelling, and writing fanfiction about it is like a whole extra layer of meta. In my mind, MM is prime stomping ground for a grand mashup/metafic of magical world children's literature and how learning also means you lose things. But the magical world itself isn't a straight analogue for childhood. The magical world can fracture childhood and decimate innocence just as easily as the real one--perhaps more so. And yet there's this longing for it, for the intensity of that experience. And the isolation that can bring on, because no one else Gets It.
I'd like something about Helena and what her magical world means as she continues to grow up. What she learns there, and what she loses. The porous boundaries between real and imagined things.
Resources: If you have not seen this movie, I highly reccomend it! It's quite well done and is the most compelling girl version of the magical world I have ever seen. Once again my narnia tag may be of use to you wrt feelings on childhood stories.
I am SO EXCITED for what you write me anon! I really hope you have fun with it <3
First: yuletide is the best and you are the best and I am so excited for whatever you write me. Presents are the best. In case the specific request for the fandom we matched on makes you want to put pins in your eyes rather than write it, I've included some extra information and resources on all of them.
I know the following seems both weirdly specific and kind of vague, which is because I tend to view stories as a bunch of feelings and ideas happening rather than a bunch of things happening. I'll always pick feelings over plot, given the choice.
Some things I like in fiction:
- Stories about ladies! The way women experience and transmit that experience. The way that women can shape their worlds and be shaped by them.
- Stories about stories. The way we make meaning out of stuff happening and the weight that stories carry. The fact that things need not have happened to be true. How and why and who we tell them to.
- Stories about deep and complex relationships. Growth and change and depth of feeling in relationships, be they romantic or platonic. The fact that the line between those two things can get blurred. Second selves and dark mirrors.
Some things I really do not like:
- Sausagefests
- First or second person POV
- Unremitting angst and unearned perfect endings
- Intractable destiny and meaningless personal choice
Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland/Narnia. Please. The very first time I saw this movie this popped into my head, and it has not left.
Mirana has this enormous creepy potential, and in a lot of ways I see her as this strange mirror to Jadis. She tries to set up her conflict with her sister as a very straightforward good/evil affair, and it's really really not. And, you know, Alice shares with the Pevensies this enormous and terrible sense of having had the depth and meaning of the magical world and then having had it taken away. How does it affect her? Not only that, but she was the White Queen's favourite, and, well, so was Edmund.
Feel free to fuck around with continuity! I have no specific desires wrt what actually happens in the fic.
If a crossover is Too Much, I would super love a fic about the moral ambiguity of Alice's combat and what it's like to lose the magical world again. Does she go the lipsticks and nylons route? The picking fights with strangers route? Something else entirely? I also think there's something to be said here about writing stories and how the stories we tell ourselves are sometimes more important and significant than what actually happened.
Resources: For my feelings on narnia, try my narnia tag: specifically this post where I talk about Growing Up and hero angst or the fic where i exploded all my feelings. Narnia acts as a locus for a lot of my feelings on childhood storytelling, so even if you're not writing the crossover the tag may still be of use to you.
Aphra Behn RPF
I'm writing my thesis partially on long 18th century women poets.Aphra Behn comes up a lot! I find it fascinating the way other women poets kind of gathered around her and wrote stuff about her---she was like this lighting rod for women's writing (and, kind of, their desire). There's something very proto rpf-y to be about the way they wrote about her. Honestly, I have very little of the actual historical background here--I have no idea if these ladies like hung out together or what. So feel free to make shit up.
I also find it really fascinating how the Bloomsbury group took her on and how Vita Sackville West and Virginia Woolf talked about her writing and desire in the context of their own writings and desires. Maybe a fic split across the centuries? But that's a whole other level of remix/historical crossover and I totally get if you don't want to go there.
Basically, I just want a story about ladies and friendship and writing and maybe making out. And High Wit, obviously.
Resources:
- Germaine Greer's Kissing the Rod has a bunch of poems by AB's circle. You can probs find it in the library.
- Failing that, Google Books has a bunch of scans of first editions and things, if you search by author.
- Behn's Wikipedia page has a list of biographies.
- Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own" contains Woolf's opinions on Behn and women's writings. There's an online edition here
Mirrormask
As you can probably tell from my first request, I am really fascinated by stories about stories and about girlhood and growing up. Mirrormask in a lot of ways is this very meta piece of storytelling, and writing fanfiction about it is like a whole extra layer of meta. In my mind, MM is prime stomping ground for a grand mashup/metafic of magical world children's literature and how learning also means you lose things. But the magical world itself isn't a straight analogue for childhood. The magical world can fracture childhood and decimate innocence just as easily as the real one--perhaps more so. And yet there's this longing for it, for the intensity of that experience. And the isolation that can bring on, because no one else Gets It.
I'd like something about Helena and what her magical world means as she continues to grow up. What she learns there, and what she loses. The porous boundaries between real and imagined things.
Resources: If you have not seen this movie, I highly reccomend it! It's quite well done and is the most compelling girl version of the magical world I have ever seen. Once again my narnia tag may be of use to you wrt feelings on childhood stories.
I am SO EXCITED for what you write me anon! I really hope you have fun with it <3