alixtii | Oct. 20th, 2012

(N.B.: Portions of this letter have been lifted from previous years' letters: 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007.)

Thank you for signing up to write a story for me! You're one of 4 people other than me who offered to write for 'Tis Pity She's a Whore or the one person other than me who offered to write for Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and I love you for that alone. Just like in 2011, it looks like I was the only one to offer for Tart, sadly, but I'll leave that part of my letter in too in case you decide you'd like to give that a try, or you are a pinch hitter or a treats writer. (The movie's available for free on Hulu, and is embedded below.) And it looks like I was the only one to offer The ILLUMINATUS! Trilogy this year too, but I'll leave it for the same reason, just in case you want to pick it up. If I'm not mistaken, the omnibus edition clocks in under a thousand plages, if you don't count the appendices--although since my request draws heavily on an appendix, I suppose you should count the appendices.

If you check out my userinfo, you'll find a 'thon policy which implores that you be true first and foremost to the prompt and your muse, and to consider whether I'd like a story as, at most, a secondary concern. I stand by that, but I also recognize there is a sense that a

yuletide story is explicitly a gift in a way which most 'thon fics aren't, so feel free to surf through this journal to get a feel for me, and here's a little bit more, if you are interested, to help you understand how I relate to the specific texts and characters in the fandoms I've requested and what I might like. OTOH, don't be intimitated; this letter might demonstrate that I've thought long and hard about why I want what I want, ~~because I'm full of myself and like to navel-gaze~~ so you can get a feel for my tastes, but the specifics of what I'd like are intentionally vague even in my own mind.

As a reader, I'm perhaps most interested in female characters--in particular, adolescent female characters with agency--and the relationships between them. I'm also drawn to what I call will-to-poweriness, the adolescent fantasy, the desire to exceed oneself that also draws me to things like superhero comics (one of my fandoms is, indeed, X-Men) and fantasy shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which is my main fandom). Female children and teenagers who prove themselves to be the equals (or betters) to adults because they are just that awesome are some of my favorite people to read about, and I think you can see this in many of my requests. This, actually, is part of where my interest in incest comes from, if you've matched with 'Tis Pity She's a Whore: with these radically autonomized figures no real problematization of consent is possible, an argument I make more fully in this post from 2006.

Beyond that, I like to think I'm easy to write for. I have few squicks--I'm fine with character death, BDSM, mpreg, dubcon, noncon, chan, incest--you name it, I'm probably okay with it. Just please no bashing of my favorite characters. Happy, uplifting fics are good, but so are soul-crushingly depressing ones so long as the pairings and characters get to be awesome. Ambivalent fics where we're not sure whether we should cheer or cry are probably best of all. If I didn't like existentialism and pseudo-nihilism in my fic, I wouldn't be a Joss Whedon fan.

( more on rebecca of sunnybrook farm )

( more on 'tis pity she's a whore )

( more on illuminatus )

( more on tart )

Thank you again for writing a story for me. Be true to your own muse, make sure the girls have agency, and I'm sure I'll love the result!

Yours in La Mancha,