Yuletide 2012
Dear Yuletide Author,
You're the greatest! Thank you so much! I am incredibly excited for whatever you come up with. Please treat this as a general sort of guide to the inside of my head, not a laundry list of requests. I am going to be delighted with whatever you come up with.
:DDD
- LADIES. Give me all your ladies and their rich inner lives and the people who love them. If you want my opinion of the Bechdel test and women in fiction, I have a post about it from last year over here.
- Complex, emotionally charged, complex interpersonal relationships, both romantic and not.
- I love romance and kissin' and stuff! I like my pairings to be equals who make each other better, who grow and change with each other, who challenge one another. I love me some epic romance and intense feelings and desperate longing that is eventually assuaged. I love reading about love as a source of strength, about love that changes us, about the things we do for love--for better or worse. I'm interested in relationships in extraordinary circumstances and in love in dangerous times. Basically, I just really like complex emotional stews!
- I have "happy endings" listed in my interests. While I do love an everybody lives, rose ending, what I mean by that is more complex. I like stories about growth and struggle and change, with organic endings that affirm those struggles as necessary.
:(((
- Misogyny! Ladies pitted against ladies, especially for the affections of a dude; breaking one woman down to build another up; madonna/whore dichotomies; slut shaming; femininity and feminine presentation being regarded as weak or worthless; ladies' agency being taken away....etc.
- Relational power imbalances that don't even out in some other respect, especially where a woman is on the less powerful end next to a dude. I really love crunchy weird power dynamics, but I don't like strictly defined roles.
- Unremitting angst and unearned happy endings.
- Second person most of the time and first person all of the time. I find the former is usually jarring and the latter almost impossible to do well from a characterization standpoint.
Other stuff: I'm cool with sex and violence, character-/setting-appropriate kink and general weirdness--if that's an organic part of your story or relevant to/ revelatory of the characters' psychology, absolutely go with that. In the balance between plot and characterization, I'll pick characterization every time. I really am quite flexible and I read in all genres and ratings. As long as you care about the characters and write from a place of affection, I'm going to enjoy your fic.
No-gos and Triggers: I really don't like reading about sexual violence or torture. I can handle mentions of it, but not much more than that. I have a really, really specific trigger around depictions/descriptions of anesthesia and surgical procedures. I can handle mentions of it, but not descriptions.
Snow White and the Huntsman
Snow White, The Huntsman
I requested this one last year, and if you'll just hand me a spoon, I'll eat my words. While I loathe younger lady/older dude, big strong dudes being devoted to their amazing women is my favourite relationship dynamic of all time. I love love love liege/vassal dynamics, and I am captivated by courtly ideal of fealty as a relationship not only of service but also of love. I really enjoyed the movie, even though it was kind of a hot mess, plotwise. I loved the oppositional relationship between Snow and Ravenna. I'd love to read about Snow coming into her queenship and being forced to struggle with it, with having power. Which is especially interesting given the movie's linking of beauty and power--something about the pageantry of power, about how ruling is as much about appearance as policy and ruling as a woman is a great big mess of stuff. I'd also love something about Snow and her huntsman, and his service to her (romantic or gen as the spirit moves you). Basically, I'm really interested in the questions the movie asks about power, femininity and love.
Deathless
Madame Lebedeva
Seriously, just write me anything about her. I love her so much. I wish the book was about her. She's my high femme patronus. I've been on a real kick lately about femme power and how narrative always demands contrition of women. I love how explicitly Lebedeva refuses that. I'd love something about her life before Marya, or about her magical training. How did she become so powerful? Where did she learn her hermetic arts? What does she do with them? See above about power, femininity and love. She's a big question mark in the book; I'd love anything that began to answer her.
The Secret World of Arrietty
Sho, Arrietty
This movie really touched me. Full disclosure, I'm a cardiac patient and have had a couple heart surgeries, so this film really spoke to me. I love how Sho was handled as a character, and I love his relationship with Arrietty so much--how they both gain so much from such a brief friendship. The movie reminded me of this poem. I'd love something where they circle back to one another later. I just am so heartbroken by the idea of them never seeing each other again. This is a strange suggestion, and my heart is by no means set on it, but I'm fascinated by a crossover with My Neighbour Totoro. I love that both stories take place in these magical domestic spaces in times of illness and upheaval. Like maybe Satsuki and Mei move in down the road, or Sho and Satsuki become friends and grow up and leave their childhood magical homes for other magics. I dunno, it's a weird unformed thing in my mind, and I throw it out there in case it is useful to you. But don't feel compelled. Anything about Sho and Arrietty will delight me!
More information: If stalking is your bag, you can find me at my main tumblr, my fannish tumblr, my ao3. My tumblrs are full of my weird feelings vomit about the things I've talked about here, in case you want more of the same but with exclamation marks. You can also find previous YT letters here, here and here.
Once again, thank you so much! I hope you have fun with it!
Originally posted at http://whatimages.dreamwidth.org/8213.html