Dear Yuletide Author 2013
ENTER HERE, YULETIDE AUTHOR AND ASSORTED LETTER-STALKERS
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To my assigned author: Thank you for writing for me! I hope you don't mind long letters... Hopefully I’ve included enough details that you can mine them for inspiration, but not so many that you feel overwhelmed. I’m just really excited about my fandoms, and I would be truly excited to see fic for any of them.
To potential treat authors: Please, come right this way. Make yourself at home. Would you like some cookies? A massage? An informative book on dental hygiene in the 1800’s? (You know. For research purposes.)
I like:
• Relationship dynamics. How characters work when they’re together, how they affect each other, how they clash or get along or both at the same time. Romance (and gen between characters who might become romantic in the future) is my favorite type of relationship to explore, with sisterly bonds a close second.
• Character studies. Characters who make flawed but very human decisions, and the mundane details of their lives that illuminate the bigger things. I like moments of honesty. I like the moment when walls that characters have built start to dissipate.
• Worldbuilding. Culture, social organization, how the characters’ world works and how they function within it… and what happens when that social order begins to shift.
• Apocalypse, dystopia and on-the-lam survival situations. How do characters survive in high-pressure situations when something dangerous is out to get them and they have to leave everything they know behind? What skills help them survive? How do they carve out a life somewhere else? A zombie rising is the #1 bulletproof plot in any fandom for me.
• “What if X had happened instead of Y?” AUs.
• Stories told through social media, letters, messages scribbled on walls, etc. Stories with a non-linear timeline. Stories told in disjointed glimpses.
• Comedy in the same vein as the canon. Witty, affectionate bickering.
• Angst. Relationships falling apart. People falling apart. People patching themselves back together haphazardly and carrying on. People hurting the ones they love. Bittersweet endings where not everything is explained or tied up neatly, just like in real life.
• Fluff, domesticity, UST, slice-of-life fic. Characters just hanging out and doing mundane stuff together. First-time fic.
• Consensual sex of any rating. Sex that emphasizes an emotional connection or an important character dynamic. Slow, romantic sex. Fun sex! Characters laughing and having conversations in the middle of sex. Morning sex where the characters still have morning breath and aren't sticklers for perfect dental hygiene.
• Kinks: frottage/grinding, cunnilingus, slow burn/extended buildup to the actual fucking part, orgasm delay/control, clit worship, tentative first-time exploration, public teasing (e.g. under the table), consensual incest.
I dislike:
• Uber-crack and completely unrelated AUs (high school AUs, coffee shop AUs, etc.)
• Sappy ~lifetime milestones~ stuff: weddings, births, kidfic, etc. A gritty, realistic take on that stuff is fine, but I’m not overly fond of sap.
• Drama generated entirely by the characters’ unexplained refusal to just talk about the thing.
• Gore/explicit violence. I find suggestion to be more powerful than a play-by-play.
• Rape and contrived dubcon tropes - aliens made them do it, fuck or die, they were under an aphrodisiac spell, etc. (Again, rape where it makes canonical sense is fine. I can see where it might play a role in some versions of the murder ballads I requested, for instance.)
• Genderswap.
• Mpreg.
• Heavy bondage, D/s or other kink not mentioned above.
• First-person POV, unless it’s in a context where the character is literally telling their own story: an autobiography, a letter, an address to the living from beyond the grave, etc.
The most important thing, though, is that you take these suggestions under consideration and then write what speaks to you. I’ll enjoy a story that you enjoyed writing, that plays to your strengths as a writer, more than anything else. You do you, Yuletide writer. ♥
Have fun, and happy Yuletide!
Extra resources:
• My Yuletide tag on Tumblr
• The rest of my Tumblr tags
• My past Yuletide letters (from which I cribbed parts of this letter) on on LJ and Tumblr
• My AO3 profile
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Appalachian murder ballads: Any (Little Sadie [listen], Darling Cora [listen], Pretty Polly [listen], Rose Connelly [listen])
What it is: These are hauntingly beautiful traditional songs that form a bridge between the British Isles and Appalachia, having been shaped by centuries of anonymous musicians in both places. Many of them are, well… about maidens getting murdered. As folk songs are wont to do, these have fractured into many different versions over the years. I’m not wedded to any specific versions, but I’ve linked some of my favorites above.
Signup prompt:
I love the genre dearly, but it’s always irked me how the female characters in traditional Appalachian music rarely get to DO or SAY anything, even if the song is named after them and they are described as being pretty badass (e.g. Darling Cora). And it really bothers me how the genre delights in killing beautiful, innocent girls for no good reason. It’s really the Edgar Allan Poe of musical genres. So I'm just hoping for some fic that ditches the chronic manpain and puts one or more of these ladies at the center of her own story for a change.
Let’s be honest here: the first idea that springs to mind is “revenge AU where the girls band together to mercilessly hunt down their attackers!” I am /totally down with that/. Either in a supernatural way (they’re ghosts!), or a metatextual way (they become self-aware and go on a rampage through the genre, killing men from Tom Dooley all the way down to Old Joe Clark, and recruiting Little Maggie along the way!), or a realistic way (one of them survives her attack and seeks out the others, and they all live in a cabin together in the backwoods and dole out vigilante justice against men who victimize women).
But I would be equally ecstatic about fic that fleshes out Rose Connelly's story, or has Pretty Polly narrate the history of her song as different musicians molded it and altered it through the years, or puts Darling Cora at the center of a moonshine empire that employs girls from several other Roud ballads and crosses pistols with Kissin' Kate Barlow's crime empire to the west (yeah, I went there).
Extra ideas:
If you wanna write something along the lines of “these four ladies say ‘fuck men’ and go live in a cabin together,” femslash is definitely okay by me and polyamorous femslash is even better. (I don’t usually do OT3s - too triangley - but I have a huge soft spot for big happy OT4s+.)
But! I picked “any” on my signup because I’m totally cool with you picking just one or two of the girls to write about. Interpret the song however you want; I just want to hear the woman’s take on things.
To me, the thing that makes these murder ballads so chilling (Darling Cora excepted) is that the actual murder is treated with such indifference. Why did this guy so coldly attack the “dear little girl” he supposedly “loved so well?” Did she have suspicions about him? What was her bond with him like?
Often the girls in these songs are cast as beautiful, trusting idiots, simply following the man into the woods and meekly submitting to their fates. I'd like to see them given a bit more depth than that.
Other relevant tropes that I love:
• moonshine-running, gun-toting girls who don’t take shit, and their heartbreakingly loyal right-hand men
• scoundrels, con artists, train robbers and rambling men who ain’t never gonna change, and the women who love them but don’t need them to get by
• ladies who pull together and forge their own family ties when the men in their lives fuck up or abandon them (à la Cold Mountain, if you’ve seen it)…
• …or alternately, find themselves tentatively exploring femslashy urges they never knew they had…
• …or alternately, don’t wait around for their man to come back at all, but strike off by themselves like avenging angels to bring him home and smite any who stands in their path (c.f. “My Ain True Love” and the Roud ballad “I Wish the Wars Were All Over”)
• Appalachia as a character, a place of spirits and secrets older than the wind; a treasure box of heritage and history, where the very soil holds stories; a home to hardscrabble people of deep convictions and deep joy that didn’t always go hand-in-hand
• ghosts, lost lovers, wailing over mountaintop graves - you know, the usual spooky bluegrass stuff
A few song-specific prompts:
• Little Sadie: Literally all the song says about her is that she was out walking at night. What the hell was she doing that made her lover so mad? What he out looking for her on purpose? Did she see him doing something he shouldn’t?
• Darling Cora: Cora arguably doesn’t get murdered so much as caught by the law (or, in versions where “them highway robbers are coming,” killed by a rival gang). I nominated her with the other girls because I thought she’d potentially make a great foil for them, but I’d also love to hear her solo story. Does she go down in a blaze of glory, or does she fake her own death and slip quietly away to start over elsewhere? Who is the guy singing to her? Why does she sleep so sound? It would also be cool to see her interact with other lady criminals of her genre like Little Maggie and Charming Betsy.
• Pretty Polly: What exactly does Polly mean by “I’m afraid you will lead my poor body astray?” If Polly is so distrustful of Willie, why does she go into the woods with him? The fuck is wrong with Willie?!? Fucking psychopath.
• Rose Connelly: I’m interested in the “money would set me free” aspect. Why did the murderer’s father want him to kill Rose? How did he feel about it? Why the hell did he poison her, and then stab her, and then throw her in the river?
I’m also not picky about how you interpret the songs and their relationship to reality. You can write within the universe of the song, set up your story as the long-lost “history” of the song, or toss what the song says and write an AU where everybody lives. Include lots of historical detail and real-world events if you enjoy that stuff (so do I!). As I mentioned above, you could even have one of the girls narrate her song’s journey through the years, starting with her murder and following all the different musicians who molded and shaped the story.
If you want to cross these songs over with other Roud/Child ballads, be my guest! It would be cool to see the girls run with Little Maggie or Katie Cruel, or be mentored by Angeline the Baker. Just, if you do so, please make sure to include which songs you’re crossing over in the author’s note. Otherwise it might be hard for me to tell which Margaret and Willie you’re talking about. XD
Extra resources:
• Appalachian Ladies YouTube playlist - Some of my favorite old Appalachian songs featuring female protagonists (some of whom even survive!), plus a modern song from the Cold Mountain soundtrack (because it just fits, okay).
• Fred Burns - Pretty Polly’s Revenge - A parody where Willie gets what’s coming to him.
• Hooray for the Riff Raff - Murder Ballad - “A song about not killing our girlfriends.” I feel this song on a spiritual level, especially the last line.
• Teresa Goddu - "Bloody Daggers and Lonesome Graveyards: The Gothic and Country Music" - A really good feminist article on the gothic themes of early Appalachian music.
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Valentine (2008): Any (Kate Providence, Danny Valentine, Vivi Langdon, Tucker)
What it is: The Greek gods live in LA! They run a matchmaking business (except for Ares, who spends his time plotting wars in Pakistan)! There’s a Bollywood song-and-dance number! Lesbian soulmates! A suspicious cat! A sinister plot to kill the gods themselves! This show is completely wacky, but also completely adorable - and deceptively clever. There are only 8 episodes, all of which you can watch on YouTube.
Signup prompt:
I’d really like pairing fic for either Kate/Danny or Vivi/Tucker (aka the soulmates from episode 3), but I’d honestly be psyched to get something for any of these characters. Anything in the tone of the canon would absolutely make my Yuletide. It would be cool to see some post-series fallout for Danny and Kate, or crazy adventures set earlier in the season, or maybe matchmaking shenanigans with a crossover couple from one of my other fandoms. For Vivi and Tucker, I would love to see something about them navigating life in the spotlight and working through their differences; they come from very different backgrounds, after all. Gen and pre-het are good.
Extra details:
Danny & Kate had the potential to be such a great TV couple. They’re a myriad of archetypes all rolled into one. God and mortal, rivals and equals, the incorrigible ladies’ man and the woman who finally captures his heart. I love their dynamic - they’re always sniping at each other, but somewhere along the short course of the show, they become a team. They’re the only ones who stick up for each other when one of them screws up.
I just want something that captures their dynamic, whether romantic or not. I only ask that, if you don’t wish to write shipfic for them, please don’t pair them off with anyone else.
Danny/Kate prompts:
• Something that picks up right after that kiss. I’d be totally up for wedding night AU that ignores the whole Bast-attack, a missing scene from during the wedding/reception, or Danny and Kate comforting each other and preparing for the oncoming storm.
• Post-series: Do they blame Kate for bringing Bast into their house? If so, does Danny stand up for her, or does he blame himself for inviting her into the house in the first place? Do they end up in a protracted war against the Egyptian gods? Do they go into hiding?
• A relationship study. Scenes in the life of Danny & Kate. What are they like together when there’s nothing dramatic going on? Do they have quiet moments together? Do they fight over the last mochi ball? How do they grow together? Do they ever grow apart? What do the other gods think about it?
• Angsty fic that deals with the mortality question. Kate’s a mortal and Danny’s a god. Could they ever be together? In mythology, Cupid actually does marry a mortal girl, Psyche, which may provide some alternate inspiration for you to go on.
• Forget the heavy stuff and just write some Danny/Kate shenanigans set earlier in the season. I love the two of them teaming up to get a job done, bickering through a cloud of UST all the way.
• Have Danny help Kate write a historical romance novel.
• Have them play matchmaker to a pairing from one of my other fandoms.
As for Vivi & Tucker, I just love their chemistry and how they both become a little less cynical because of each other.
Vivi/Tucker prompts:
• I’m super interested in the phenomenon of fame and how people cope with it, and how celebrities lives are similar but fundamentally different from everyone else’s. I would love something that examined Vivi’s relationship to fame, whether it included Tucker or not.
• I would also love to see how Vivi and Tucker work things out going forward. In one of the later eps - I forget which - there’s a magazine cover in the background announcing their engagement. How does that work out? How does Tucker’s life change because of Vivi’s notoriety, and what kinds of compromises do they have to make for each other?
• I also love studying fans and fan communities, so if you were to include something about Vivi’s fans - how they react to the play and to her change in behavior (assuming she stops being a party girl after getting with Tucker… but maybe it’s not so simple?), I would eat that shit up like candy.
I would honestly just love to see them in quiet, fluffy moments at home, too. They’re just so sweet and I want all the fic in the world of them just being happy together, dammit! We get to see so little of them, so anything that expands on their relationship would be my favorite thing ever.
I’m pretty much up for any genre in this fandom, so go nuts!
Extra resources:
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Holes (2003): Kate Barlow
What it is: A movie starring Sigourney Weaver, Shia LaBoeuf, and Patricia Arquette. It involves the ever-spinning wheel of fate, the injustices of the juvenile incarceration system, and a female bandit leader in the Wild West. If you like stories in which multiple narratives weave together in the end, then Holes is for you. You can watch the entire movie on YouTube.
Signup prompt:
I want a story about Kissin’ Kate’s outlaw days. Where’d she go after Sam’s death? At what point did she decide to keep killing (or did she ever consciously make that decision at all)? How did she accumulate an outlaw gang? Where’d they live, how’d they stay ahead of the law, and what was her relationship with them like? Was there a part of her that got a thrill out of it, despite the circumstances that brought her there?
Extra details:
For me, Kate is one of those rare characters whom I think of as a real person, almost. More like a historical figure than a fictional character. When I think about everything that happens to her, I feel for her the way I would feel for a real woman.
I’ve always wished she could tell me more about herself. She doesn’t get to say much in the text, but I always felt like she was speaking anyway throughout: speaking through her kisses, through the buried lipstick container, through the treasure she left behind. What was she trying to say? (Or alternately, what would those things say about her, if they could speak?)
I think I love her for her contradictions. She’s a wronged woman, but also a murderer. She’s devastatingly unhappy, but I think there’s also a part of her that enjoys being an outlaw. I love both the movie and the book equally, but I really adore Patricia Arquette’s portrayal of Kate. By the end, she’s beaten down but defiant; heartbroken, but with a certain satisfaction about the way things have turned out; cynical, but with enough tenderness left to pity a little girl she once knew.
She’s wanted to die for a long time, but curiously, she didn’t just let herself until - in the movie version, at least - she got caught with her back to the wall. Why is that?
I just have so many feelings about this character, omg. I’m not looking for relationship-centric fic here, or Kate/Sam romance (although including that in the story would be cool). I’m really interested in Kate’s life post-Sam: Kate as a woman, Kate as an outlaw queen, Kate as a survivor.
If you don’t want to write from her perspective or her contemporaries’, then write about the mark she left behind. Show me newspaper clippings, apocryphal quotations, the journal entries of her victims - have someone put together a documentary or a museum exhibit or a Ph.D thesis about the mysterious Kissin’ Kate, and let her keep speaking through the things she left behind.
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Tierra de lobos: Almudena Lobo, Nieves Lobo, Isabel Lobo, Aníbal Expósito
What it is: A Spanish TV show currently in its third season. It follows two outlaw brothers who return to their deadbeat dad’s homestead to settle down, only to tangle with their dad’s rich landowning enemy, Lobo. Lobo happens to have four highly spirited and independent daughters, so you can guess who the oldest one falls in love with. Lobo’s daughters are basically the heart of this show, which includes a ton of fully fleshed-out female characters and relationships that grow and change realistically as time goes by. It also depicts the sexism and repression of the 1800’s without ever veering into Very Special Episode territory. There are even canonical lesbians in seasons two and three. It’s just a really, really fucking good show. You can grab all the episodes so far, along English subtitles, here.
Signup prompt:
I just love the family relationships in this show. I’m fascinated by the complicated web of love, resentment, and loyalty among the Lobo sisters, and the conflicts that drive them to alternately protect and sabotage each other. I’m also interested in the ties of love and history they share with Aníbal; he’s both a brother and an employee to them at various times. I loved the glimpse of their childhood relationships we got in the season 1 finale, when Aníbal offered Almudena his riding crop. I would love to see more of the four of them growing up together. Fic about the origins and evolution of Nieves and Aníbal’s fucked-up, codependent, almost incestuous relationship would also be fantastic.
Extra details:
I’m just gonna copy a Tumblr post I made a year ago, with some minor alterations, because it describes my feels for this show pretty perfectly:
The saddest part of everything Lobo has done is that he’s created rifts between his daughters, and between his daughters and this boy (Aníbal) whom they love like a brother (or, er, more than a brother).
I so want to request Yuletide fic about them all growing up together, all those strong-willed girls and this sensitive boy who had to learn to be hard.
The sisters, how they love each other and protect each other and understand each other so well, so it’s that much sadder when Lobo’s fuckery comes between them, and when they try to hold each other to their expectations of what a young lady should do and end up hurting each other. I’m fascinated by how each daughter pursues her own agency in such radically different ways, so that they end up working at cross purposes a lot of times.
Even after attempting suicide to get out of marrying someone she didn’t love, Isabel tries to come between Almudena and Cesar because in her mind, family loyalty is #1. That’s how she’s always tried to win respect: by demonstrating that she was more competent and loyal to her family than anyone else. Then, in the second season, we see all that start to fall apart for her.
The calculating compartmentalization of Nieves, how even though she flouts the rules of maidenly behavior way more than the other two, she’ll persecute her sisters for trying to overtly change those rules, because she believes in order to have any control over her life, a woman has to outwardly behave and not rock the boat.
And how they all try to protect Rosa from the truth about what’s going on in their lives, even though they know it’s just making her hate people she shouldn’t and believe in ideals that are ultimately poisonous.
I could honestly just rant for days about the familial relationships in Casa Grande, gah.
At the end of season 1, hearing Aníbal talk about how Almudena used to steal his riding crop when she was a kid, and how happy he was to give it to her finally… and then how crestfallen he was when she wouldn’t take it. He loves these girls. He grew up with them. He taught them how to ride. He’s so torn between the things he has to do for Lobo, and not wanting to hurt these people he loves. How he always felt a connection to Cesar, even before finding out their familial connection, because they both love a Lobo woman and can’t be with her because of their station in life.
Even Nieves and Aníbal’s romance is built on the intimacy that comes from growing up together. They’ve literally loved each other forever, and that adds all these layers of playfulness and hurtfulness and intuitiveness to their relationship, which is why they’re my favorite couple on the show.
(Or, er, they were before all this weirdness happened with Nieves turning psycho and Aníbal suddenly having feelings for Elena. I do not ship that at all, btw. I still kinda have hope for Nieves and Aníbal, but it’s touch and go at this point. I would love to see a Yuletide fic take on their relationship, though, fucked up as it is. Especially because it’s so fucked up. Something about them growing up together like siblings and having their sexual awakening with each other, starting the whole cycle of fucked-up-ness, would be perfect. Feel free to play up the almost-incest angle or not.)
And Lidia and the girls! I get chills every time she stands up to Lobo for the sake of her girls. Lidia’s got some creepy shit of her own going, but I looooove how protective she is of those girls, and how she’s the only one who knows how to call Lobo on his shit and really freak him out.
And do not even get me started on the little hodgepodge family at La Quebrada, okay. DO NOT EVEN. I would love any inclusion of them, although they aren’t my focus.
Tl;dr THIS IS A SHOW ABOUT FAMILIES AND THE WAYS THEY COALESCE AND THE PEOPLE IN THEM HURT EACH OTHER BUT LOVE EACH OTHER TOO NO MATTER WHAT SOCIETY SAYS, and anything that focuses on the relationships in this show will win my heart. ♥
Extra resources:
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Thanks again, Yuletide author, and sorry about the wall o' text. I'm just really excited to see what you come up with!
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To my assigned author: Thank you for writing for me! I hope you don't mind long letters... Hopefully I’ve included enough details that you can mine them for inspiration, but not so many that you feel overwhelmed. I’m just really excited about my fandoms, and I would be truly excited to see fic for any of them.
To potential treat authors: Please, come right this way. Make yourself at home. Would you like some cookies? A massage? An informative book on dental hygiene in the 1800’s? (You know. For research purposes.)
I like:
• Relationship dynamics. How characters work when they’re together, how they affect each other, how they clash or get along or both at the same time. Romance (and gen between characters who might become romantic in the future) is my favorite type of relationship to explore, with sisterly bonds a close second.
• Character studies. Characters who make flawed but very human decisions, and the mundane details of their lives that illuminate the bigger things. I like moments of honesty. I like the moment when walls that characters have built start to dissipate.
• Worldbuilding. Culture, social organization, how the characters’ world works and how they function within it… and what happens when that social order begins to shift.
• Apocalypse, dystopia and on-the-lam survival situations. How do characters survive in high-pressure situations when something dangerous is out to get them and they have to leave everything they know behind? What skills help them survive? How do they carve out a life somewhere else? A zombie rising is the #1 bulletproof plot in any fandom for me.
• “What if X had happened instead of Y?” AUs.
• Stories told through social media, letters, messages scribbled on walls, etc. Stories with a non-linear timeline. Stories told in disjointed glimpses.
• Comedy in the same vein as the canon. Witty, affectionate bickering.
• Angst. Relationships falling apart. People falling apart. People patching themselves back together haphazardly and carrying on. People hurting the ones they love. Bittersweet endings where not everything is explained or tied up neatly, just like in real life.
• Fluff, domesticity, UST, slice-of-life fic. Characters just hanging out and doing mundane stuff together. First-time fic.
• Consensual sex of any rating. Sex that emphasizes an emotional connection or an important character dynamic. Slow, romantic sex. Fun sex! Characters laughing and having conversations in the middle of sex. Morning sex where the characters still have morning breath and aren't sticklers for perfect dental hygiene.
• Kinks: frottage/grinding, cunnilingus, slow burn/extended buildup to the actual fucking part, orgasm delay/control, clit worship, tentative first-time exploration, public teasing (e.g. under the table), consensual incest.
I dislike:
• Uber-crack and completely unrelated AUs (high school AUs, coffee shop AUs, etc.)
• Sappy ~lifetime milestones~ stuff: weddings, births, kidfic, etc. A gritty, realistic take on that stuff is fine, but I’m not overly fond of sap.
• Drama generated entirely by the characters’ unexplained refusal to just talk about the thing.
• Gore/explicit violence. I find suggestion to be more powerful than a play-by-play.
• Rape and contrived dubcon tropes - aliens made them do it, fuck or die, they were under an aphrodisiac spell, etc. (Again, rape where it makes canonical sense is fine. I can see where it might play a role in some versions of the murder ballads I requested, for instance.)
• Genderswap.
• Mpreg.
• Heavy bondage, D/s or other kink not mentioned above.
• First-person POV, unless it’s in a context where the character is literally telling their own story: an autobiography, a letter, an address to the living from beyond the grave, etc.
The most important thing, though, is that you take these suggestions under consideration and then write what speaks to you. I’ll enjoy a story that you enjoyed writing, that plays to your strengths as a writer, more than anything else. You do you, Yuletide writer. ♥
Have fun, and happy Yuletide!
Extra resources:
• My Yuletide tag on Tumblr
• The rest of my Tumblr tags
• My past Yuletide letters (from which I cribbed parts of this letter) on on LJ and Tumblr
• My AO3 profile
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Appalachian murder ballads: Any (Little Sadie [listen], Darling Cora [listen], Pretty Polly [listen], Rose Connelly [listen])
What it is: These are hauntingly beautiful traditional songs that form a bridge between the British Isles and Appalachia, having been shaped by centuries of anonymous musicians in both places. Many of them are, well… about maidens getting murdered. As folk songs are wont to do, these have fractured into many different versions over the years. I’m not wedded to any specific versions, but I’ve linked some of my favorites above.
Signup prompt:
I love the genre dearly, but it’s always irked me how the female characters in traditional Appalachian music rarely get to DO or SAY anything, even if the song is named after them and they are described as being pretty badass (e.g. Darling Cora). And it really bothers me how the genre delights in killing beautiful, innocent girls for no good reason. It’s really the Edgar Allan Poe of musical genres. So I'm just hoping for some fic that ditches the chronic manpain and puts one or more of these ladies at the center of her own story for a change.
Let’s be honest here: the first idea that springs to mind is “revenge AU where the girls band together to mercilessly hunt down their attackers!” I am /totally down with that/. Either in a supernatural way (they’re ghosts!), or a metatextual way (they become self-aware and go on a rampage through the genre, killing men from Tom Dooley all the way down to Old Joe Clark, and recruiting Little Maggie along the way!), or a realistic way (one of them survives her attack and seeks out the others, and they all live in a cabin together in the backwoods and dole out vigilante justice against men who victimize women).
But I would be equally ecstatic about fic that fleshes out Rose Connelly's story, or has Pretty Polly narrate the history of her song as different musicians molded it and altered it through the years, or puts Darling Cora at the center of a moonshine empire that employs girls from several other Roud ballads and crosses pistols with Kissin' Kate Barlow's crime empire to the west (yeah, I went there).
Extra ideas:
If you wanna write something along the lines of “these four ladies say ‘fuck men’ and go live in a cabin together,” femslash is definitely okay by me and polyamorous femslash is even better. (I don’t usually do OT3s - too triangley - but I have a huge soft spot for big happy OT4s+.)
But! I picked “any” on my signup because I’m totally cool with you picking just one or two of the girls to write about. Interpret the song however you want; I just want to hear the woman’s take on things.
To me, the thing that makes these murder ballads so chilling (Darling Cora excepted) is that the actual murder is treated with such indifference. Why did this guy so coldly attack the “dear little girl” he supposedly “loved so well?” Did she have suspicions about him? What was her bond with him like?
Often the girls in these songs are cast as beautiful, trusting idiots, simply following the man into the woods and meekly submitting to their fates. I'd like to see them given a bit more depth than that.
Other relevant tropes that I love:
• moonshine-running, gun-toting girls who don’t take shit, and their heartbreakingly loyal right-hand men
• scoundrels, con artists, train robbers and rambling men who ain’t never gonna change, and the women who love them but don’t need them to get by
• ladies who pull together and forge their own family ties when the men in their lives fuck up or abandon them (à la Cold Mountain, if you’ve seen it)…
• …or alternately, find themselves tentatively exploring femslashy urges they never knew they had…
• …or alternately, don’t wait around for their man to come back at all, but strike off by themselves like avenging angels to bring him home and smite any who stands in their path (c.f. “My Ain True Love” and the Roud ballad “I Wish the Wars Were All Over”)
• Appalachia as a character, a place of spirits and secrets older than the wind; a treasure box of heritage and history, where the very soil holds stories; a home to hardscrabble people of deep convictions and deep joy that didn’t always go hand-in-hand
• ghosts, lost lovers, wailing over mountaintop graves - you know, the usual spooky bluegrass stuff
A few song-specific prompts:
• Little Sadie: Literally all the song says about her is that she was out walking at night. What the hell was she doing that made her lover so mad? What he out looking for her on purpose? Did she see him doing something he shouldn’t?
• Darling Cora: Cora arguably doesn’t get murdered so much as caught by the law (or, in versions where “them highway robbers are coming,” killed by a rival gang). I nominated her with the other girls because I thought she’d potentially make a great foil for them, but I’d also love to hear her solo story. Does she go down in a blaze of glory, or does she fake her own death and slip quietly away to start over elsewhere? Who is the guy singing to her? Why does she sleep so sound? It would also be cool to see her interact with other lady criminals of her genre like Little Maggie and Charming Betsy.
• Pretty Polly: What exactly does Polly mean by “I’m afraid you will lead my poor body astray?” If Polly is so distrustful of Willie, why does she go into the woods with him? The fuck is wrong with Willie?!? Fucking psychopath.
• Rose Connelly: I’m interested in the “money would set me free” aspect. Why did the murderer’s father want him to kill Rose? How did he feel about it? Why the hell did he poison her, and then stab her, and then throw her in the river?
I’m also not picky about how you interpret the songs and their relationship to reality. You can write within the universe of the song, set up your story as the long-lost “history” of the song, or toss what the song says and write an AU where everybody lives. Include lots of historical detail and real-world events if you enjoy that stuff (so do I!). As I mentioned above, you could even have one of the girls narrate her song’s journey through the years, starting with her murder and following all the different musicians who molded and shaped the story.
If you want to cross these songs over with other Roud/Child ballads, be my guest! It would be cool to see the girls run with Little Maggie or Katie Cruel, or be mentored by Angeline the Baker. Just, if you do so, please make sure to include which songs you’re crossing over in the author’s note. Otherwise it might be hard for me to tell which Margaret and Willie you’re talking about. XD
Extra resources:
• Appalachian Ladies YouTube playlist - Some of my favorite old Appalachian songs featuring female protagonists (some of whom even survive!), plus a modern song from the Cold Mountain soundtrack (because it just fits, okay).
• Fred Burns - Pretty Polly’s Revenge - A parody where Willie gets what’s coming to him.
• Hooray for the Riff Raff - Murder Ballad - “A song about not killing our girlfriends.” I feel this song on a spiritual level, especially the last line.
• Teresa Goddu - "Bloody Daggers and Lonesome Graveyards: The Gothic and Country Music" - A really good feminist article on the gothic themes of early Appalachian music.
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Valentine (2008): Any (Kate Providence, Danny Valentine, Vivi Langdon, Tucker)
What it is: The Greek gods live in LA! They run a matchmaking business (except for Ares, who spends his time plotting wars in Pakistan)! There’s a Bollywood song-and-dance number! Lesbian soulmates! A suspicious cat! A sinister plot to kill the gods themselves! This show is completely wacky, but also completely adorable - and deceptively clever. There are only 8 episodes, all of which you can watch on YouTube.
Signup prompt:
I’d really like pairing fic for either Kate/Danny or Vivi/Tucker (aka the soulmates from episode 3), but I’d honestly be psyched to get something for any of these characters. Anything in the tone of the canon would absolutely make my Yuletide. It would be cool to see some post-series fallout for Danny and Kate, or crazy adventures set earlier in the season, or maybe matchmaking shenanigans with a crossover couple from one of my other fandoms. For Vivi and Tucker, I would love to see something about them navigating life in the spotlight and working through their differences; they come from very different backgrounds, after all. Gen and pre-het are good.
Extra details:
Danny & Kate had the potential to be such a great TV couple. They’re a myriad of archetypes all rolled into one. God and mortal, rivals and equals, the incorrigible ladies’ man and the woman who finally captures his heart. I love their dynamic - they’re always sniping at each other, but somewhere along the short course of the show, they become a team. They’re the only ones who stick up for each other when one of them screws up.
I just want something that captures their dynamic, whether romantic or not. I only ask that, if you don’t wish to write shipfic for them, please don’t pair them off with anyone else.
Danny/Kate prompts:
• Something that picks up right after that kiss. I’d be totally up for wedding night AU that ignores the whole Bast-attack, a missing scene from during the wedding/reception, or Danny and Kate comforting each other and preparing for the oncoming storm.
• Post-series: Do they blame Kate for bringing Bast into their house? If so, does Danny stand up for her, or does he blame himself for inviting her into the house in the first place? Do they end up in a protracted war against the Egyptian gods? Do they go into hiding?
• A relationship study. Scenes in the life of Danny & Kate. What are they like together when there’s nothing dramatic going on? Do they have quiet moments together? Do they fight over the last mochi ball? How do they grow together? Do they ever grow apart? What do the other gods think about it?
• Angsty fic that deals with the mortality question. Kate’s a mortal and Danny’s a god. Could they ever be together? In mythology, Cupid actually does marry a mortal girl, Psyche, which may provide some alternate inspiration for you to go on.
• Forget the heavy stuff and just write some Danny/Kate shenanigans set earlier in the season. I love the two of them teaming up to get a job done, bickering through a cloud of UST all the way.
• Have Danny help Kate write a historical romance novel.
• Have them play matchmaker to a pairing from one of my other fandoms.
As for Vivi & Tucker, I just love their chemistry and how they both become a little less cynical because of each other.
Vivi/Tucker prompts:
• I’m super interested in the phenomenon of fame and how people cope with it, and how celebrities lives are similar but fundamentally different from everyone else’s. I would love something that examined Vivi’s relationship to fame, whether it included Tucker or not.
• I would also love to see how Vivi and Tucker work things out going forward. In one of the later eps - I forget which - there’s a magazine cover in the background announcing their engagement. How does that work out? How does Tucker’s life change because of Vivi’s notoriety, and what kinds of compromises do they have to make for each other?
• I also love studying fans and fan communities, so if you were to include something about Vivi’s fans - how they react to the play and to her change in behavior (assuming she stops being a party girl after getting with Tucker… but maybe it’s not so simple?), I would eat that shit up like candy.
I would honestly just love to see them in quiet, fluffy moments at home, too. They’re just so sweet and I want all the fic in the world of them just being happy together, dammit! We get to see so little of them, so anything that expands on their relationship would be my favorite thing ever.
I’m pretty much up for any genre in this fandom, so go nuts!
Extra resources:
- My Valentine tag on Tumblr
- My shipping tag on Tumblr (inspiration for the crossover-inclined writer)
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Holes (2003): Kate Barlow
What it is: A movie starring Sigourney Weaver, Shia LaBoeuf, and Patricia Arquette. It involves the ever-spinning wheel of fate, the injustices of the juvenile incarceration system, and a female bandit leader in the Wild West. If you like stories in which multiple narratives weave together in the end, then Holes is for you. You can watch the entire movie on YouTube.
Signup prompt:
I want a story about Kissin’ Kate’s outlaw days. Where’d she go after Sam’s death? At what point did she decide to keep killing (or did she ever consciously make that decision at all)? How did she accumulate an outlaw gang? Where’d they live, how’d they stay ahead of the law, and what was her relationship with them like? Was there a part of her that got a thrill out of it, despite the circumstances that brought her there?
Extra details:
For me, Kate is one of those rare characters whom I think of as a real person, almost. More like a historical figure than a fictional character. When I think about everything that happens to her, I feel for her the way I would feel for a real woman.
I’ve always wished she could tell me more about herself. She doesn’t get to say much in the text, but I always felt like she was speaking anyway throughout: speaking through her kisses, through the buried lipstick container, through the treasure she left behind. What was she trying to say? (Or alternately, what would those things say about her, if they could speak?)
I think I love her for her contradictions. She’s a wronged woman, but also a murderer. She’s devastatingly unhappy, but I think there’s also a part of her that enjoys being an outlaw. I love both the movie and the book equally, but I really adore Patricia Arquette’s portrayal of Kate. By the end, she’s beaten down but defiant; heartbroken, but with a certain satisfaction about the way things have turned out; cynical, but with enough tenderness left to pity a little girl she once knew.
She’s wanted to die for a long time, but curiously, she didn’t just let herself until - in the movie version, at least - she got caught with her back to the wall. Why is that?
I just have so many feelings about this character, omg. I’m not looking for relationship-centric fic here, or Kate/Sam romance (although including that in the story would be cool). I’m really interested in Kate’s life post-Sam: Kate as a woman, Kate as an outlaw queen, Kate as a survivor.
If you don’t want to write from her perspective or her contemporaries’, then write about the mark she left behind. Show me newspaper clippings, apocryphal quotations, the journal entries of her victims - have someone put together a documentary or a museum exhibit or a Ph.D thesis about the mysterious Kissin’ Kate, and let her keep speaking through the things she left behind.
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Tierra de lobos: Almudena Lobo, Nieves Lobo, Isabel Lobo, Aníbal Expósito
What it is: A Spanish TV show currently in its third season. It follows two outlaw brothers who return to their deadbeat dad’s homestead to settle down, only to tangle with their dad’s rich landowning enemy, Lobo. Lobo happens to have four highly spirited and independent daughters, so you can guess who the oldest one falls in love with. Lobo’s daughters are basically the heart of this show, which includes a ton of fully fleshed-out female characters and relationships that grow and change realistically as time goes by. It also depicts the sexism and repression of the 1800’s without ever veering into Very Special Episode territory. There are even canonical lesbians in seasons two and three. It’s just a really, really fucking good show. You can grab all the episodes so far, along English subtitles, here.
Signup prompt:
I just love the family relationships in this show. I’m fascinated by the complicated web of love, resentment, and loyalty among the Lobo sisters, and the conflicts that drive them to alternately protect and sabotage each other. I’m also interested in the ties of love and history they share with Aníbal; he’s both a brother and an employee to them at various times. I loved the glimpse of their childhood relationships we got in the season 1 finale, when Aníbal offered Almudena his riding crop. I would love to see more of the four of them growing up together. Fic about the origins and evolution of Nieves and Aníbal’s fucked-up, codependent, almost incestuous relationship would also be fantastic.
Extra details:
I’m just gonna copy a Tumblr post I made a year ago, with some minor alterations, because it describes my feels for this show pretty perfectly:
The saddest part of everything Lobo has done is that he’s created rifts between his daughters, and between his daughters and this boy (Aníbal) whom they love like a brother (or, er, more than a brother).
I so want to request Yuletide fic about them all growing up together, all those strong-willed girls and this sensitive boy who had to learn to be hard.
The sisters, how they love each other and protect each other and understand each other so well, so it’s that much sadder when Lobo’s fuckery comes between them, and when they try to hold each other to their expectations of what a young lady should do and end up hurting each other. I’m fascinated by how each daughter pursues her own agency in such radically different ways, so that they end up working at cross purposes a lot of times.
Even after attempting suicide to get out of marrying someone she didn’t love, Isabel tries to come between Almudena and Cesar because in her mind, family loyalty is #1. That’s how she’s always tried to win respect: by demonstrating that she was more competent and loyal to her family than anyone else. Then, in the second season, we see all that start to fall apart for her.
The calculating compartmentalization of Nieves, how even though she flouts the rules of maidenly behavior way more than the other two, she’ll persecute her sisters for trying to overtly change those rules, because she believes in order to have any control over her life, a woman has to outwardly behave and not rock the boat.
And how they all try to protect Rosa from the truth about what’s going on in their lives, even though they know it’s just making her hate people she shouldn’t and believe in ideals that are ultimately poisonous.
I could honestly just rant for days about the familial relationships in Casa Grande, gah.
At the end of season 1, hearing Aníbal talk about how Almudena used to steal his riding crop when she was a kid, and how happy he was to give it to her finally… and then how crestfallen he was when she wouldn’t take it. He loves these girls. He grew up with them. He taught them how to ride. He’s so torn between the things he has to do for Lobo, and not wanting to hurt these people he loves. How he always felt a connection to Cesar, even before finding out their familial connection, because they both love a Lobo woman and can’t be with her because of their station in life.
Even Nieves and Aníbal’s romance is built on the intimacy that comes from growing up together. They’ve literally loved each other forever, and that adds all these layers of playfulness and hurtfulness and intuitiveness to their relationship, which is why they’re my favorite couple on the show.
(Or, er, they were before all this weirdness happened with Nieves turning psycho and Aníbal suddenly having feelings for Elena. I do not ship that at all, btw. I still kinda have hope for Nieves and Aníbal, but it’s touch and go at this point. I would love to see a Yuletide fic take on their relationship, though, fucked up as it is. Especially because it’s so fucked up. Something about them growing up together like siblings and having their sexual awakening with each other, starting the whole cycle of fucked-up-ness, would be perfect. Feel free to play up the almost-incest angle or not.)
And Lidia and the girls! I get chills every time she stands up to Lobo for the sake of her girls. Lidia’s got some creepy shit of her own going, but I looooove how protective she is of those girls, and how she’s the only one who knows how to call Lobo on his shit and really freak him out.
And do not even get me started on the little hodgepodge family at La Quebrada, okay. DO NOT EVEN. I would love any inclusion of them, although they aren’t my focus.
Tl;dr THIS IS A SHOW ABOUT FAMILIES AND THE WAYS THEY COALESCE AND THE PEOPLE IN THEM HURT EACH OTHER BUT LOVE EACH OTHER TOO NO MATTER WHAT SOCIETY SAYS, and anything that focuses on the relationships in this show will win my heart. ♥
Extra resources:
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Thanks again, Yuletide author, and sorry about the wall o' text. I'm just really excited to see what you come up with!