Antici . . . pation! (Of the Yule Variety)

[alixtii]

Am working on my yuletide letter, because I am caught up in nervous Yuletide anticipation and need an outlet, as there hasn't been a yuletide_admin post since last night's "nominations are about to close" post.

My Yuletide letters often spend a lot of time cannibalizing the previous years' letters, but I'm thinking this might be less of the case this year since so many of my requests are new--The ILLUMINATUS! Trilogy and The NeverEnding Story III alongside my perennial Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? request and I haven't decided on my fourth yet--but perhaps not because the underlying motivations driving what I want haven't really changed. I still want will-to-powery teen girls pwning the universe, even if which teen girls may have changed from last year. (Previous years' girls have included Valentine Wiggin, Rebecca Thatcher, Mary Lennox, Laz and Lor Long, and Hallie Parker and Annie James.)

My requests don't seem to be as incest-heavy as years past, though (although the TBD fandom could always end up being one in which I suggest a 'cest pairing). I'm not sure what to make of that.

Comments

[cleo]

So...I really glad to see that incest-heavy requests have existed/do exist in yuletide, as mine were heavy with incest prompts last year (it was my first year, and nothing else I saw last year was). Lol.

I'm freaking out because I really don't have a clear idea of what I'm asking for. "Copenhagen" and Brideshead Revisited are givens for me, but omg the possibilities for the other two...

[alixtii]

It's important to give one's Yuletide Santa an out in case she's not comfortable with writing incest (especially since the details are optional anyhow)--so one needs to be just as happy to receive gen about family members or stories where the characters are 'shipped with non-family members--but there's nothing wrong, IMNSHO, in deliberately and explicitly leaving the door open to having one's author write an incest pairing. In the three years I've participated, I have had each year a story written for me to a prompt that encouraged the 'cest if the muse went there; only once did I get a story that was explicitly 'cest (Annie/Hallie), but the other two were beautiful stories (Val & Peter and Mary & Neville, the latter which isn't technically 'cest but does I think count as borderline) that gave me what I wanted in other ways, and so much better than they would have been if the author had felt the need to force herself to go where she wasn't comfortable.

[cleo]

Yeah, I definitely agree. I made it clear that with the fandoms where 'cest pairings were the ones I really wanted, that I'd be equally happy with gen, slash, or het. Though, last year, I got the story from the prompt that I thought was a long shot not because I wanted Chaucer but because I wanted something so specific. Lol.

[lunabee34]

*nods*

That's always my strategy.

I say in my letter that I really, really want incest but totally understand if they can't write it.

I pretty much just pick fandoms and choose "Any" for characters. I don't want to be too prescriptive.

[alixtii]

As someone who usually specifies what characters one is able to write (I usually just offer the female characters), I've gotten quite a few (well, two out of three) "any" requests. Sometimes they still manage to fit not quite well with what I offered to write.

When I request a 'cesty pairing, I always specify characters, but my next step depends on the pairing itself. For some pairings--like Val/Peter or Annie/Hallie--I say I either want 'cest fic or else fic that showcases the depth of their sibling bond in a nonsexual way, because I care more about seeing the characters interacting than I do getting porn. That's how I got Six Dances written for me, which is a wonderfully Val&Peter piece beautifully written but no more 'cesty than canon (which is to say, subtexty enough for me).

Other times, I really do want porn more than any particular pairing, so I'll name three or four characters such that possible permutations include at least one 'cest pairing, but also at least one non-'cesty het pairing and one non-'cesty femslash pairing (as well as threesome and/or foursome options!). This is what I did last year with Tom/Mary/Becky in Tom Sawyer, and what I'll be doing this year with Bastian/Nicole/Childlike Empress in NeverEnding Story III.