Dear Yuletide Author 2012
Oct. 20th, 2012 05:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alixtii(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![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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.
Feel free to just ignore the het romances gestured towards in canon; I suppose I don't have a problem with Adam Ladd appearing in the fic, since he obviously has been a huge influence in the lives of both Rebecca and Emma Jane, but the romance and focus of the fic should be between the two girls.
I'd really love to see a modern high school AU of this fandom, with Anabellla and Giovanni as high school students who happen to be in love and, oh yeah, brother and sister. Since the Yuletide minimum word count is 1,000 words, obviously I don't expect you to rewrite the entire play from beginning to end--although feel free if you happen to have way more free time on your hands than I do on mine--so you should have a lot of freedom on deciding which scenes you'd want to remix and how and what sort of thematic statement you'd want them to end up making. I like fluffy 'cest and I like dark 'cest and pretty much everything in between.
If high school isn't a place you feel you want to go, other types of AUs would be fun too. Incest in space! Incest noir! Annabella and Giovanni go to Hogwarts! Or become companions to the Doctor and travel in the TARDIS! Annabella is a vampire slayer!
Pretty much any point in canon would be great, although I would especially like to see some of Miss Portinari after Hagbard appoints her the spiritual leader, and setting it after the Lief Erikson becomes a spaceship in RAW's Schrodinger Cat trilogy would be just awesome. (For some reason, I have this image of her being the spiritual leader of not only the ship, but also a planet named Fred that the Lief Erikson is in orbit around. Don't ask me where that came from.) But finding out more about the time when she had just joined the crew of the Lief Erikson would be cool too.
What is it like to have reached enlightenment when your body is still changing and being flooded by hormones--and where do you go from there, when you still have the rest of your life in front of you? (Apparently, in the universe next door she visits a man in prison.) How does she interact with the rest of the crew, before and/or after her appointment as episkopos? (We know George Dorn was intimidated by her immediately after her elevation.) Does she miss the company of other people her age? What is her relationship with Hagbard? We know from the appendix that she and Hagbard occasionally have sex (but "never became lovers"); does she have any other partners, and how does she approach those relationships? Basically I just want to see more of this very cool character we saw relatively little of in canon (and much of what we did see only in an appendix), taking control not only of her own life, but being responsible for the spiritual well-being of an entire submarine.
Note that while the movie is Cat-centric, she doesn't need to be the protagonist of your fic; I'm interested in the relationships between all the girls more or less equally. Either femslash (up to and including explicit PWP) or subtexty gen (you know, like the ostensibly platonic naked hug in the screencap to the right--you can never have too many naked hugs!) is fine. Het (again, up to and including explicit porn) is too, as long as the relationships between the girls are addressed as well. Crossovers are okay, if you have the undeniable urge to have Cat turn out to be a Vampire Slayer and have Grace come from a long line of Watchers, or have Eloise be recruited by the Stargate program, so long as it doesn't overwhelm the fic and distract from the relationships between the girls.
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,
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alixtii/ alixtii/ ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alixtii
Alixtii O'Krul
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, 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.
Emma Jane is the Alice B. Toklas to Rebecca's Gertrude Stein. These two are just so incredibly married that showing them at pretty much any stage of their life would be awesome. You could write a first time, showing their first date or first kiss or first time they had sex, or you could go established relationship because the books already have done everything needed to convince me of them as a couple. You could write a missing scene from the periods of time covered by the two books, or show what happens after the end of the books, or you could write a futurefic like suggested in the prompt above. Anything really goes here, from a small comfortable vignette like those found in New Chronicles of Rebecca to something more serious wrestling with the historical context to something truly wild in which Emma Jane and Rebecca fight off aliens or travel in the TARDIS to something more solidly romantic to PWP where they roleplay in the bedroom. Or all of the above. Just so long as Emma Jane and Rebecca keep that married vibe which is so--unintentionally, of course, or so one assumes--strong in canon. The more femslashy the better, of course!Fandom: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm - Kate Douglas Wiggan
Characters: Emma Jane Perkins, Rebecca Randall
Request: The super-'shippy chapter at the end of New Chronicles of Rebecca notwithstanding, these two are so married to each other. I'd like femslash which emphasizes the way they complement each other. Perhaps futurefic where Rebecca the famous poet travels to Paris with Emma Jane at her side as trusty companion?
Feel free to just ignore the het romances gestured towards in canon; I suppose I don't have a problem with Adam Ladd appearing in the fic, since he obviously has been a huge influence in the lives of both Rebecca and Emma Jane, but the romance and focus of the fic should be between the two girls.
Usually when I request incest, I make a point to offer a way out for Yuletiders not comfortable writing it, saying a gen fic about the siblings would be fine, but since in this case, the 'cest pairing is not only canon, but the main focus of the source canon, I'm going to assume you knew what you were getting into when you offered to write in this fandom.Fandom: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore - John Ford
Characters: Giovanni, Annabella
Request: A modern high school AU, à la 10 Things I Hate About You, She's the Man, Clueless, Cruel Intentions, etc.
I'd really love to see a modern high school AU of this fandom, with Anabellla and Giovanni as high school students who happen to be in love and, oh yeah, brother and sister. Since the Yuletide minimum word count is 1,000 words, obviously I don't expect you to rewrite the entire play from beginning to end--although feel free if you happen to have way more free time on your hands than I do on mine--so you should have a lot of freedom on deciding which scenes you'd want to remix and how and what sort of thematic statement you'd want them to end up making. I like fluffy 'cest and I like dark 'cest and pretty much everything in between.
If high school isn't a place you feel you want to go, other types of AUs would be fun too. Incest in space! Incest noir! Annabella and Giovanni go to Hogwarts! Or become companions to the Doctor and travel in the TARDIS! Annabella is a vampire slayer!
I'm interested in learning more about Miss Portinari. She hits all my kinks: a girl who is both a teen and the spiritual leader of the Lief Erikson, commanding a position of authority and respect while being sexually and spiritually and practically liberated. (Also I sort of love that she is always referred to using the honorific, even if that means we don't know her first name. Assuming of course that her given name isn't actually "Miss"--which I think is a fairly safe assumption to make, especially given her Catholic parents and the fact she was born prior to the Second Vatican Council.) Talk about being will-to-powery!Fandom: The ILLUMINATUS! Trilogy - Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
Character: Miss Portinari
Request: What is it like for a teenaged girl to be the spiritual leader of the Lief Erikson? Show me Miss Portinari being awesome and wise and a teeanager (with a sex drive) and having fun all while she's at it.
Pretty much any point in canon would be great, although I would especially like to see some of Miss Portinari after Hagbard appoints her the spiritual leader, and setting it after the Lief Erikson becomes a spaceship in RAW's Schrodinger Cat trilogy would be just awesome. (For some reason, I have this image of her being the spiritual leader of not only the ship, but also a planet named Fred that the Lief Erikson is in orbit around. Don't ask me where that came from.) But finding out more about the time when she had just joined the crew of the Lief Erikson would be cool too.
What is it like to have reached enlightenment when your body is still changing and being flooded by hormones--and where do you go from there, when you still have the rest of your life in front of you? (Apparently, in the universe next door she visits a man in prison.) How does she interact with the rest of the crew, before and/or after her appointment as episkopos? (We know George Dorn was intimidated by her immediately after her elevation.) Does she miss the company of other people her age? What is her relationship with Hagbard? We know from the appendix that she and Hagbard occasionally have sex (but "never became lovers"); does she have any other partners, and how does she approach those relationships? Basically I just want to see more of this very cool character we saw relatively little of in canon (and much of what we did see only in an appendix), taking control not only of her own life, but being responsible for the spiritual well-being of an entire submarine.
This movie frustrated me, because it spends the first two acts focusing on Cat's relationships with her peers, including some majorly femslashy scenes, and then MASSIVE SPOILER happens and--Cat reconnects with her mother? It felt as if the ending was the resolution to some OTHER movie about a girl and her mother, not the one I'd actually been watching. I don't necessarily expect you to provide the resolution the movie didn't, but I would like some further exploration of the relationship dynamics between the girls. How does Cat get through school after the movie ends? Is she able to repair her relationships with the other girls? Can Grace get over her prejudices? Is Eloise really a lesbian?Fandom: Tart
Characters: Cat Storm/Eloise Logan/Grace Bailey/Heather von Strum
Request: More of the girls' interactions, please, as femslashy as possible.
Note that while the movie is Cat-centric, she doesn't need to be the protagonist of your fic; I'm interested in the relationships between all the girls more or less equally. Either femslash (up to and including explicit PWP) or subtexty gen (you know, like the ostensibly platonic naked hug in the screencap to the right--you can never have too many naked hugs!) is fine. Het (again, up to and including explicit porn) is too, as long as the relationships between the girls are addressed as well. Crossovers are okay, if you have the undeniable urge to have Cat turn out to be a Vampire Slayer and have Grace come from a long line of Watchers, or have Eloise be recruited by the Stargate program, so long as it doesn't overwhelm the fic and distract from the relationships between the girls.
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,
alixtii/ alixtiiAlixtii O'Krul