DYW 2013
Dear, dear Yuletide Writer,
Thank you SO MUCH for offering to write in one of these fandoms. You are clearly a person of discernment and taste, and I am absolutely going to love whatever you write! I am a very easy person to please, so please write a story that makes you happy, above all. I’m going to give you some ideas about the sort of thing I enjoy, in the hopes that it might be helpful, but no pressure -- disregard everything that follows if it causes more stress rather than less!
In general, I do lean towards stories that feature romance, and I've largely organized my requests by pairing. But don’t feel pressured to write relationship-based stories if you don’t feel comfortable. Gen is fine in any fandom. Mainly what I love is affection and deep bonds and how relationships grow and change, and those things can manifest themselves in lots of different ways! To write friendship well is its own amazing and wonderful talent.
Here are some things I loooove:
VILLETTE - CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Lucy Snowe/Ginevra Fanshawe
Cards on the table: I ship it bad. I don't know if it's Lucy wondering why she always shares her food with Ginevra even though she thinks she's an asshole, or Ginevra's collection of (masculine) pet names for Lucy (TIMON!!!) and inability to walk ten paces without leaning on her favorite sourpuss... Wait, I know what it is: it's the time Lucy semi-cross-dressed for the school play and decided to woo the shit out of Ginevra onstage, practically going off-book to do so, in order to show Dr John HOW IT'S DONE. Lucy and Ginevra happen so much. So many feelings.
So, if you could see your way to writing some femslash here, I'd give you so many (virtual) hugs -- I'm dying to read something where they realize what's what between them and act on it, especially if Lucy's dryness could be preserved throughout. But I'd also be very happy with some gen where they squabble, and maybe Ginevra does something nice for Lucy for once. Ginevra POV could also be wacky-great. Happy to see any of the novels' other characters in cameos if you like; I especially like M. Paul, even if I think his appeal is overstated by Lucy somewhat.
KILL YOUR DARLINGS (2013)
David Kammerer, Lucien Carr, William Burroughs
A thing you should know about me is that my fandom of this movie is already well-established even though it's only just now coming out, because I spent like a year and a half reading the screenplay with a friend and shrieking about it. I mean: it is GREAT. The library heists and blowjobs! The pining! Symbolic red neckerchiefs! My heartsong is KYD.
I'd be especially interested in a Kammerer-centric story, since he fascinates me. I appreciate the movie's ambition to offer a more sympathetic view of Kammerer, while still acknowledging the creepy aspects of the dude. A character piece that gets me into his head would be ideal. I've listed Lucien and Burroughs as my additional characters, but you could pick one or the other to set David off -- I don't need all three, and shipping or gen would both be great, in either configuration. Both the Lucien/David and Burroughs/David relationships are only obliquely explored by the film; I'd love to see more, esp. pre-canon. How do David and his obsession appear to Burroughs, and what constitutes the bond there? What does David get out of his moments with Lucien, particularly before things turn sour? How do the erotics of the relationships intersect with more literary or intellectual transmissions? aaaaaah anything you write would be amazing. Just imagine me grinning as I fly into the sun.
ROD ALLBRIGHT ALIEN ADVENTURES - BRUCE COVILLE
Grakker/Flinge "Snout" Iblik
Okay, so: Snout and Grakker are so married. They share a private room, have some sort of mental bond, an UST-y story about how they met, and share about ten thousand slashy moments in a series of four books WRITTEN FOR KIDS. And I love how Grakker is such a jerk to everyone but Snout, and I love how frustratingly mysterious and wry Snout can be, and I can't get over them. An expanded version of the how-I-met-Snout story that Grakker starts to tell in Search for Snout is the fic of my dreams; I am dying to read it. It’s all so vague, how they stopped hating each other and became so close, and probably Grakker was self-editing because HE'S GRAKKER. I bet if we heard Snout's side of the story we might get a better sense of their Feelings. I’m so interested in how Selima Khan relates to all that -- and BKR too, for that matter. However, really anything is fine -- I would also love a look at how they live their lives on the Ferkel when the world ISN’T about to end. Alien domesticity would be just lovely.
LITERARY RPF
Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden
"His kindness was so touching and disarming that it sometimes made me quite irritable. I was cross with myself because I couldn't hope to compete with it; because it somehow made me feel myself an inferior, unworthy mortal, a traitor to his friendship. All [Stephen's] friends betrayed him, in some minor degree, sooner or later. ... It was overwhelming to be believed in by Stephen: it was like being hugged by an enormous bear." --Isherwood, Lions and Shadows
Somewhere out there, a person must exist who is as weirdly obsessed with Stephen Spender as me, and who has always wanted to write a fic about him for an appreciative audience. That audience is me. I will eat it alive. I have listed Wystan as a character as well because I love their dynamic -- Stephen later said that he considered himself Auden's less clever younger brother, which I think is perfect, because Stephen was so EARNEST and you can just imagine him as a drippy nineteen-year-old, bounding up to the very sharp and tough Auden or Isherwood like a six-foot-tall infant, asking Very Seriously what they thought of his new poem. (Happy to have Isherwood around as well, though he's more optional.) Like:
"Last weekend Wystan came down bringing a friend called Johnny Walker. Pale. Red lips. Black hair. Small nose. Dark eyes. ... We went to a cinema in the afternoon, then the boy went home & Wystan went out with me that evening. The next day W sent me a p.c. 'I hear you held Johnny's hand yesterday in the Super. Stephen, is this manners?' I felt rather annoyed, because I can't make out whether he was trying to be funny or really angry or what. Anyhow it was not true and quite funny. I am writing two more stories now. This letter is rather silly, I think, but anything written at Oxford needs an apology." (Spender to Isherwood, winter 1930)
!!!!! What a ridiculous person. Did you know that Stephen Spender once asked the straight boy he was in love with at Oxford (Marston, of the Marston poems) to go on a walking holiday with him and Stephen practiced talking about rugby and cars beforehand so he could converse knowledgably on hetero subjects? I could honestly go on about him forever. Anyway: young dorky hero-worshipping Spender is my fave, but something set in America when he and Wystan have moved there would be great also -- really anything. I don't ship Spender with Wystan or Christopher, mainly because I think it's hilarious that Stephen seems to have had a complex about how frank the other two were about not being at all attracted to him.
Anything you write, I would have a heart attack over. This is the truth.
FRIDAY'S CHILD - GEORGETTE HEYER
Gilbert Ringwood/Ferdinand Fakenham, Hero Wantage, Anthony "Sherry" Sheringham
If possible, the fic I would like best would focus on the Gil/Ferdy relationship, preferably slashy since I think they're about as in-love as you can get, and feature Hero and Sherry more as adjuncts or matchmakers. Part of the joy of Friday's Child, for me, is how Hero absorbs more than she strictly ought to about Things and is singularly unfazed by them, so why shouldn't she make up her mind that Gil and Ferdy need to stop beating about the bush? But if you don't want to do slash, I'm happy with something about their friendship, or something about Hero's platonic relationships with Gil, Ferdy, and (the unnominated and thus optional) George, which are honestly my favorite part of the book -- how she inspires such genuine friendship and care from these men-about-town. I hope that those friendships continue strong after her marriage is, hahaha, finally consummated, and would love post-canon about how her friends continue to be a part of that life. Like all Georgette fans, I am addicted to the language, the slang, the silliness! I love Gil's laconic speech and Ferdy's dim bafflement. God, this entire novel is just a heap of joy.
SORRY THIS POST IS SO LONG. But listen: I love you. Thank you for taking this on. I am going to be so excited on Christmas morning whatever you come up with. I hope you have fun with this, and that you get a wonderful story yourself, and that your holiday season is absolutely lovely. Until I know who you are, I will be thinking of you.
Love,
zlot
Thank you SO MUCH for offering to write in one of these fandoms. You are clearly a person of discernment and taste, and I am absolutely going to love whatever you write! I am a very easy person to please, so please write a story that makes you happy, above all. I’m going to give you some ideas about the sort of thing I enjoy, in the hopes that it might be helpful, but no pressure -- disregard everything that follows if it causes more stress rather than less!
In general, I do lean towards stories that feature romance, and I've largely organized my requests by pairing. But don’t feel pressured to write relationship-based stories if you don’t feel comfortable. Gen is fine in any fandom. Mainly what I love is affection and deep bonds and how relationships grow and change, and those things can manifest themselves in lots of different ways! To write friendship well is its own amazing and wonderful talent.
Here are some things I loooove:
- Some humor, even within a ‘serious’ fic. If you can write crisp banter, lay it on me! If you can’t, that’s okay, neither can I really. Dialogue is my favorite part of any fic, especially if you can nail a character voice!
- Domesticity! I adore slice-of-life missing-moments stuff, because I think it’s awesome when romance emerges out of the mundane. I love the little things -- the details. And I'm the kind of person who is really bad at giving fic prompts because they're always like MAKE THEM BAKE A CAKE TOGETHER! Or THEY SHOULD GO ON A ROAD TRIP! (NB: you don’t have to include cakes, those were just goofy examples.)
- The edges of canon -- backstory, first-meeting first-time first-love, post-canon. I like feeling like time has passed.
- Happy endings. I’m basically made of marshmallow, and sometimes enjoy fluffy stories as long as they’re not, you know, EMBARRASSINGLY nauseatingly sweet. Nothing has to be unremittingly cheerful all the way through - I like conflict and complex emotions and serious feelings and Reasons We Can't Be Together hugely - but to end on an optimistic note would be nice! It’s Christmas. (Holiday stories are totally fine but not necessary, by the way.)
- I guess I have a few idiosyncratic things that I like, not that I need them all to be present. I love getting to read characters' mail/emails/texts/tweets/telegrams/g-chat conversations/notes passed in classrooms. I love scenes depicting eating (esp. breakfast). I love dancing. Bickering. These are all so optional that it's silly, but I figure too much information is always better than too little. You can throw out whatever's not helpful.
- Character bashing, especially when the character is female. Slut shaming, also.
- PWP. Sex is awesome, totally love it (especially when it’s character-driven and character-specific), but it’s the dessert, you know? Not the main course. And of course you don’t have to write sex at all if you don’t want.
- Really kinky shit, non-con, character death - the usual. Humiliation kind of freaks me out. I’m not really into hurt/comfort.
- Unremitting angst.
VILLETTE - CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Lucy Snowe/Ginevra Fanshawe
Cards on the table: I ship it bad. I don't know if it's Lucy wondering why she always shares her food with Ginevra even though she thinks she's an asshole, or Ginevra's collection of (masculine) pet names for Lucy (TIMON!!!) and inability to walk ten paces without leaning on her favorite sourpuss... Wait, I know what it is: it's the time Lucy semi-cross-dressed for the school play and decided to woo the shit out of Ginevra onstage, practically going off-book to do so, in order to show Dr John HOW IT'S DONE. Lucy and Ginevra happen so much. So many feelings.
So, if you could see your way to writing some femslash here, I'd give you so many (virtual) hugs -- I'm dying to read something where they realize what's what between them and act on it, especially if Lucy's dryness could be preserved throughout. But I'd also be very happy with some gen where they squabble, and maybe Ginevra does something nice for Lucy for once. Ginevra POV could also be wacky-great. Happy to see any of the novels' other characters in cameos if you like; I especially like M. Paul, even if I think his appeal is overstated by Lucy somewhat.
KILL YOUR DARLINGS (2013)
David Kammerer, Lucien Carr, William Burroughs
A thing you should know about me is that my fandom of this movie is already well-established even though it's only just now coming out, because I spent like a year and a half reading the screenplay with a friend and shrieking about it. I mean: it is GREAT. The library heists and blowjobs! The pining! Symbolic red neckerchiefs! My heartsong is KYD.
I'd be especially interested in a Kammerer-centric story, since he fascinates me. I appreciate the movie's ambition to offer a more sympathetic view of Kammerer, while still acknowledging the creepy aspects of the dude. A character piece that gets me into his head would be ideal. I've listed Lucien and Burroughs as my additional characters, but you could pick one or the other to set David off -- I don't need all three, and shipping or gen would both be great, in either configuration. Both the Lucien/David and Burroughs/David relationships are only obliquely explored by the film; I'd love to see more, esp. pre-canon. How do David and his obsession appear to Burroughs, and what constitutes the bond there? What does David get out of his moments with Lucien, particularly before things turn sour? How do the erotics of the relationships intersect with more literary or intellectual transmissions? aaaaaah anything you write would be amazing. Just imagine me grinning as I fly into the sun.
ROD ALLBRIGHT ALIEN ADVENTURES - BRUCE COVILLE
Grakker/Flinge "Snout" Iblik
Okay, so: Snout and Grakker are so married. They share a private room, have some sort of mental bond, an UST-y story about how they met, and share about ten thousand slashy moments in a series of four books WRITTEN FOR KIDS. And I love how Grakker is such a jerk to everyone but Snout, and I love how frustratingly mysterious and wry Snout can be, and I can't get over them. An expanded version of the how-I-met-Snout story that Grakker starts to tell in Search for Snout is the fic of my dreams; I am dying to read it. It’s all so vague, how they stopped hating each other and became so close, and probably Grakker was self-editing because HE'S GRAKKER. I bet if we heard Snout's side of the story we might get a better sense of their Feelings. I’m so interested in how Selima Khan relates to all that -- and BKR too, for that matter. However, really anything is fine -- I would also love a look at how they live their lives on the Ferkel when the world ISN’T about to end. Alien domesticity would be just lovely.
LITERARY RPF
Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden
"His kindness was so touching and disarming that it sometimes made me quite irritable. I was cross with myself because I couldn't hope to compete with it; because it somehow made me feel myself an inferior, unworthy mortal, a traitor to his friendship. All [Stephen's] friends betrayed him, in some minor degree, sooner or later. ... It was overwhelming to be believed in by Stephen: it was like being hugged by an enormous bear." --Isherwood, Lions and Shadows
Somewhere out there, a person must exist who is as weirdly obsessed with Stephen Spender as me, and who has always wanted to write a fic about him for an appreciative audience. That audience is me. I will eat it alive. I have listed Wystan as a character as well because I love their dynamic -- Stephen later said that he considered himself Auden's less clever younger brother, which I think is perfect, because Stephen was so EARNEST and you can just imagine him as a drippy nineteen-year-old, bounding up to the very sharp and tough Auden or Isherwood like a six-foot-tall infant, asking Very Seriously what they thought of his new poem. (Happy to have Isherwood around as well, though he's more optional.) Like:
"Last weekend Wystan came down bringing a friend called Johnny Walker. Pale. Red lips. Black hair. Small nose. Dark eyes. ... We went to a cinema in the afternoon, then the boy went home & Wystan went out with me that evening. The next day W sent me a p.c. 'I hear you held Johnny's hand yesterday in the Super. Stephen, is this manners?' I felt rather annoyed, because I can't make out whether he was trying to be funny or really angry or what. Anyhow it was not true and quite funny. I am writing two more stories now. This letter is rather silly, I think, but anything written at Oxford needs an apology." (Spender to Isherwood, winter 1930)
!!!!! What a ridiculous person. Did you know that Stephen Spender once asked the straight boy he was in love with at Oxford (Marston, of the Marston poems) to go on a walking holiday with him and Stephen practiced talking about rugby and cars beforehand so he could converse knowledgably on hetero subjects? I could honestly go on about him forever. Anyway: young dorky hero-worshipping Spender is my fave, but something set in America when he and Wystan have moved there would be great also -- really anything. I don't ship Spender with Wystan or Christopher, mainly because I think it's hilarious that Stephen seems to have had a complex about how frank the other two were about not being at all attracted to him.
Anything you write, I would have a heart attack over. This is the truth.
FRIDAY'S CHILD - GEORGETTE HEYER
Gilbert Ringwood/Ferdinand Fakenham, Hero Wantage, Anthony "Sherry" Sheringham
If possible, the fic I would like best would focus on the Gil/Ferdy relationship, preferably slashy since I think they're about as in-love as you can get, and feature Hero and Sherry more as adjuncts or matchmakers. Part of the joy of Friday's Child, for me, is how Hero absorbs more than she strictly ought to about Things and is singularly unfazed by them, so why shouldn't she make up her mind that Gil and Ferdy need to stop beating about the bush? But if you don't want to do slash, I'm happy with something about their friendship, or something about Hero's platonic relationships with Gil, Ferdy, and (the unnominated and thus optional) George, which are honestly my favorite part of the book -- how she inspires such genuine friendship and care from these men-about-town. I hope that those friendships continue strong after her marriage is, hahaha, finally consummated, and would love post-canon about how her friends continue to be a part of that life. Like all Georgette fans, I am addicted to the language, the slang, the silliness! I love Gil's laconic speech and Ferdy's dim bafflement. God, this entire novel is just a heap of joy.
SORRY THIS POST IS SO LONG. But listen: I love you. Thank you for taking this on. I am going to be so excited on Christmas morning whatever you come up with. I hope you have fun with this, and that you get a wonderful story yourself, and that your holiday season is absolutely lovely. Until I know who you are, I will be thinking of you.
Love,
zlot