The Tradëscan Codex

Title: If on a Yuletide morn a slasher
Fandoms: If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino, Fandom RPF, Plato's Dialogues, and (very briefly) Jonny Quest. Also a reference to Socialist RPF.
Pairings: Reader/Ludmilla, female!Socrates/female!Charmides, Benton Quest/Jonny Quest. Also a mention of Marx/Engels.


You are about to read "If on a Yuletide morn a slasher," an If on a winter's night a traveler fic written by an anonymous author. You'll want to make sure you're reading this a suitable distance from your computer screen, in a well-lit room, with the contrast and brightness of your screen properly adjusted. Or else you might want to print it out and read the hard copy.

Ludmilla is logged onto her laptop, across the room from you, re-reading for the thirtieth time the Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels BDSM fic some poor soul ended up having to write for her. She still can't stop chuckling, no matter how much she tries to surpress it.

"Hush," you tell her, because you're really interested in the Calvino fic. The fact that there exists If on a winter's night a traveler fic in the archive is pretty darn awesome by itself, you think, and you really want to find out what, exactly, the anonymous author decided to do with it.

Ludmilla sticks her tongue out at you, which is more or less the reaction you expected.

( The cursor hovers over the link and you sloppily strike the touchpad with your finger, summoning the fic to you from its sleeping place somewhere deep in the inner workings of the AO3. )
 

Right now I am:

• Reading as much Yuletide fic as I can before the reveal. (Not that I'm going to stop after the reveal, of course.
• Downloading the David Tennant Hamlet.
• Trying to figure out an ending for the Giles/Kennedy fic.
• Putting the finishing touches on all my year-in-review posts, and doing other things to prepare for the Yuletide reveal.
• Not really working on my Broken Toys fic, although I should be.

OMG, my author essentially wrote me a fourth movie. My yuletide fic this year could well have been titled The NeverEnding Story IV: A New Beginning or some such.

In the world transform'd shall view, a fourth nihilistic force, the "Disquiet," threatens Fantasia, but it is more subtle in its working than the three which preceded it. Nicole and Bastian travel to Fantasia to try and save the world of imagination. The fic focuses on the Bastian & Nicole stebsibling relationship just like I asked it to, giving me exactly what I wanted in that regard, and culminates in a moment so perfect and beautiful (and geared right at my narrative kinks) that I shan't spoil it.

It also takes one of the important female secondary characters, Nicole, and promotes her to viewpoint character and protagonist, creating a chance for her story to be told (with that metaphor becoming reified in an appropriately metafictional way). Fic which passes the Bechdel test FTW!

The author captures perfectly the voices of the various Fantasians, while providing the reader (me!!!) with a Bastian and Nicole who are ever so slightly more mature (three years have passed in the fic since The NeverEnding Story III), but with their own new set of problems as a result of their transition into adulthood.

ETA: If you've never seen the third movie (part of me wants to say "lucky you" but the part of me which genuinely loves it despite its many flaws won't let me), all you need to know to understand the fic is that Bastian's father has remarried and so Bastian has a stepsister, Nicole. (It does make oblique reference to the fact that in the third movie Nicole steals the Auryn from Bastian and uses it to go shopping, which is the second most awesome scene in the whole movie; see image below/under the cut) All the other essential canon is contained in the first movie.

( image )

(N.B.: Portions of this letter have been lifted from last year's letter.)

Thank you for signing up to write a story for me! You're one of three people (one of whom was me) who offered to write for The ILLUMINATUS! Trilogy, one of seven people (one of whom was me) who offered to write for The NeverEnding Story film trilogy, one of eight people (one of whom was me) who offered to write for Heinlen's books, and/or one of nine people (one of whom was me) who offered to write for Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?, and I love you for that alone.

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.

I'm 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). My especial kink is (female) children and teenagers who prove themselves to be the equals (or betters) to adults because they are just that awesome. All of this comes through in my requests, I think. There is a clear will-to-poweriness in Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?, most of all in Carmen herself, of course, beyond good and evil, doing whatever she wants whenever she wants because she can, stealing things for no good reason except as an expression of her superiority, the former ACME agent engaged in a perpetual game of cat and mouse. But also, on one level, in Zach and Ivy, the young (!!) ACME agents who pursue her, and on another level, in Player, just as much a teenager, radically empowered within the world of the game she plays and manipulates, Carmen's eternal antagonist. Likewise, Miss Portinari is a girl who is both a teen and the spiritual leader of the Lief Erikson, commanding a position of authority and respect while be sexually and spiritually and practically liberated. Bastian and Nicole are teens who have command the awesome power of the NeverEnding Story and of the Auryn. And the Childlike Empress--well, I could go on for ages about the Childlike Empress. Likewise, Laz and Lor always get the better of their elders.

This, actually, is where my interest in incest comes from: with these radically autonomized figures no real problematization of consent is possible, an argument I make more fully in this post from 2006. But don't feel like you have to write incest if you've matched up with me on The NeverEnding Story or Heinlein (although, really, Laz/Lor is canon, no?); I'd much prefer experiencing the characters as you see them behaving in-character as you see them than twisted out of shape to force them into bed with each other. The most important thing is to preserve the canon dynamics--I have my trusty 'cest goggles for everything else. Although if you throw me a bone in making it subtexty, that's wonderful too. But there is a way in (my corners of, I don't know whence you hail) fandom that we use sex as a metaphor for emotional intimacy, so that incest becomes the deepest, strongest type of interpersonal communion imaginable (with the platonic ideal being, ultimately, twincest)--and this is the dynamic I'm looking for with Bastian/Nicole or Laz/Lor if you go down that route, a demonstration that their strongest bond (or, at least, an exceptionally strong bond) is to each other, and if you feel most comfortable providing that bond in a non-sexual way that's still absolutely wonderful.

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 (obviously, given the above, and in both the fluffy and dirtybadwrong versions, although I prefer fluffy for sibcest), you name it, I'm probably okay with it. Just please no bashing of my favorite characters, and only break up pairings if you're going to put the characters back together again in a combination that fits my requests. 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 where on earth is carmen sandiego? )

( more on the ILLUMINATUS! trilogy )

( very little about r.a.h. )

( more on the neverending story )

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

Yours in La Mancha,



Episkopos Reverend Alixtii O'Krul V, TRL
Church of St. Jesu the Heretic, Discordian

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.

Robert A. Heinlein - World-as-Myth multiverse
Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson - The ILLUMINATUS! Trilogy
Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?
RPF - Firefly
Michael Ende - The Neverending Story
The NeverEnding Story trilogy (movies)

*shakes with squee*

Title: Saints and Sinners
Fandom: Hairspray 2007 movieverse
Pairing: Tracy Turnblad/Penny Pingleton, Corny Collins/Motormouth Maybelle
Summary: October 1968: Tracy and Penny are jailed after a student demonstration at UMd. But the song of love and hope plays on--mostly.
A/N: Written for Yuletide 2008. The Yuletide version, with corresponding comments, can be found here.

( Saints and Sinners )

Title: The Life of a Flower
Fandom: The Secret Garden musicalverse
Pairing: Mary Lennox/Neville Craven, mention of Archibald Craven/Mrs. Medlock
Summary: Mary Lennox was twelve years old when she arrived at Misselthwaite, and Neville could not see past the familiar brown eyes looking out from a black dress, but each new year brings with it a new blooming.
A/N: Written for Yuletide 2008. The Yuletide version (with corresponding comments) can be found here.

( The Life of a Flower )

The alt text of this xkcd really made me laugh.

. . .

Sugar and Spices and Explosive Devices, D.E.B.S. Lucy and Scud's backstory, with a coda with Lucy and Amy. Fits perfectly into canon, capturing the tone and characterizations perfectly.

Stepmotherhood, Into the Woods. Cinderella learns to manage in their strange makeshift family.

iDo Lunch With Freddie, iCarly. My brother watches this show, I don't know why, possibly to mock. Anyway, Sam's by far my favorite character, and this fic catches her voice perfectly, while respecting the social dynamics of the trio and making all three of the main characters more three-dimensional than they are on the show.

und mit Geistesstärke tu ich Wunder auch, The Time-Traveler's Wife. Oh, Alba. You hit my (non-sexual) kinks so hard.

Oh my God, I'm so in love with my yuletide story, guys. It's Duet, The Secret Garden musicalverse, and it has Mary and Neville--and it's them, Mary and Neville from the musical picked up and placed into my fic, every thought and behavior perfect--learning not to hate each other with every single step of the process spelled out in the most luscious prose. It nicely captures the plunge into despair so the ascent out of it will be that much more powerful, and the tears were definitely freely flowing as I read the story, because in the end it demonstrates the sort of powerful, unresistable (but not saccharine or over-the-top) optimism and hope that behooves a fic written for this fandom, based on this musical and the book it is based upon.

(If you haven't seen the musical but are familiar with the book and would like to read the fic, all you need to know is that Neville is Archie's brother who is Colin's doctor and was also in love with Archie's wife Lily. He plays a much larger role in the musical than Dr. Craven does in the book, taking on the role of Mary's chief antagonist. If you haven't read the book, then somebody stole your childhood.)

And I also have a Yuletide Treat, The Life of a Flower, which attacks the problem almost from the other side. More explicitly Mary/Neville rather than Mary&Neville, the proses is sparse and a lot of the work is left to the imagine, but it details the progression of Mary and Neville's relationship as Mary progressively gets one year older, then skipping several years to a widowed Mary at Misselthwaite but still ending with hope.

. . .

I've uploaded a total of four fics to the Yuletide Archive this year. Guess which ones they are in the comments to this post and I'll write you a ficlet for each one you guess correctly.

*goes off to read Yuletide stories and wait until the absolute last minute to write Pretty Lights and 3_Ships fics*

ETA: Screening is now on. Comments which aren't guesses will be made visible (unless you tell me not to for some reason).