Yuletide 2k17!
Oct. 7th, 2017 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intrikate88Dear Yuletide author,
Hi! I'm finally posting this letter! If you were waiting, sorry for the patience I forced you to have!
I'm gonna mostly copy and paste the things I love from past years' letters, because look, I will always love a good found family and rustbucket spaceships that need a little love and percussive maintenance will always have a large chunk of my heart. But I've been thinking a lot about stories this year, and what kind of storyteller I want to be, and seeing how very much people change as they define themselves by what narrative they think they're the hero of. And it really makes a difference in the story being told, when characters are consciously choosing joy; I was at Heroescon this year and heard Matt Fraction describe some of the characterization he was doing as "finding this character's expression of joy" and it really stuck with me. I don't know that I'm really saying anything in particular about what I want in a fic, or if it's even relevant to any fic that could come out of these fandoms, but it's been on my mind and if there's something there that resonates with you, then I would love to read it.
Otherwise, more generally, I love characters exploring how they relate to one another and how to trust each other even when trust seems impossible. I especially love if they can do that while being inconvenienced with adventures and adversaries who are out to capture or kill them and were perhaps prepared for people who fight back, but maybe not for people who barely pause bickering with each other in order to do so. I love include competency porn, found families and the choices that go into making them, bedsharing, a fake relationship becoming real or a real relationship that for some reason needs the pretense of not existing, historical AUs, femslash and women who love women, ladies having friendships with each other that are just as valid as any romantic relationship (or friendships that are also romantic relationships!), casefic, and people just generally being sappy stupid in love with each other.
DNWs include: outright non-con/dub-con, infidelity outside of a negotiated open or polyamorous relationship, a lot of angst in general but particularly for detailed descriptions of rape or sexual assault, animal death, or non-canon major character death. Less extreme: you can include pregnancy if you want but generally speaking stories centered around pregnancy aren’t really my thing. Also I'm just not really feeling anything that's too much of a downer, really; some really honest emotional shit is alright but there are enough unfixable broken things around, and if you could end on a slightly higher note, I'd appreciate it.
Requested fandoms under the cut:
Timeless (Lucy, Wyatt, Rufus, Denise)
The Conjuring (Ed and Lorraine)
I just love Ed and Lorraine being utterly in love with each other while ghost hunting, that’s really all it comes down to. I mean, there is no counting how many times I have watched the “Can’t Help Falling in Love” clip from the second movie on repeat when I need to feel better. They may talk about faith in God, but their total faith in each other is what comes through again and again. So while I doubt you signed up for Conjuring for any other reason but writing Ed/Lorraine fluff, since they were the only two characters nominated and I’ve been here in past years when there were some of the other people in the movies, but I just want to say that yes, them being adorable would make me happy in every way. I’d love a casefic where they investigate a haunting together. I’d love how they work together when there ISN’T an emergency and how they figure out just the magic of ordinary life together. They share a passion for helping people who have nowhere else to turn, and problems they may not even be able to articulate to other people, and the Warrens just care so much about not just helping with their needs on the level of a haunting, but also getting elbows deep in a car engine or a plumbing problem; they know that the people they help might need just as much support on making sure their home is livable practically in addition to making it feel like a safe place to have a life.
Other random things you might feel like exploring: what the fuck are they doing with a room full of possessed shit in their house that they live in with their child, why is that there like a lock on the door is going to stop bad spiritual shit from getting out? How does Lorraine feel about having defaced the Bible that clearly is a copy she’s held on to and treasured for years? Both movies have had young girls targeted in the hauntings, and that’s clearly a pathway for empathy since the Warrens have their own young daughter, but do they have plans and ways to protect her from being targeted in the same way?
One final thing I love about the Conjuring movies just in their storytelling: the horror of not being believed is not milked for drama. There are girls and women under attack from things other people can’t see, and the Warrens believe them; when Lorraine knows something or feels something, she tells Ed and he believes her. The two of them communicate, and they believe in the women who tell them something is wrong. It’s strange that a horror series would be a refuge from the tedious fright of this trope, but here we are.
Hi! I'm finally posting this letter! If you were waiting, sorry for the patience I forced you to have!
I'm gonna mostly copy and paste the things I love from past years' letters, because look, I will always love a good found family and rustbucket spaceships that need a little love and percussive maintenance will always have a large chunk of my heart. But I've been thinking a lot about stories this year, and what kind of storyteller I want to be, and seeing how very much people change as they define themselves by what narrative they think they're the hero of. And it really makes a difference in the story being told, when characters are consciously choosing joy; I was at Heroescon this year and heard Matt Fraction describe some of the characterization he was doing as "finding this character's expression of joy" and it really stuck with me. I don't know that I'm really saying anything in particular about what I want in a fic, or if it's even relevant to any fic that could come out of these fandoms, but it's been on my mind and if there's something there that resonates with you, then I would love to read it.
Otherwise, more generally, I love characters exploring how they relate to one another and how to trust each other even when trust seems impossible. I especially love if they can do that while being inconvenienced with adventures and adversaries who are out to capture or kill them and were perhaps prepared for people who fight back, but maybe not for people who barely pause bickering with each other in order to do so. I love include competency porn, found families and the choices that go into making them, bedsharing, a fake relationship becoming real or a real relationship that for some reason needs the pretense of not existing, historical AUs, femslash and women who love women, ladies having friendships with each other that are just as valid as any romantic relationship (or friendships that are also romantic relationships!), casefic, and people just generally being sappy stupid in love with each other.
DNWs include: outright non-con/dub-con, infidelity outside of a negotiated open or polyamorous relationship, a lot of angst in general but particularly for detailed descriptions of rape or sexual assault, animal death, or non-canon major character death. Less extreme: you can include pregnancy if you want but generally speaking stories centered around pregnancy aren’t really my thing. Also I'm just not really feeling anything that's too much of a downer, really; some really honest emotional shit is alright but there are enough unfixable broken things around, and if you could end on a slightly higher note, I'd appreciate it.
Requested fandoms under the cut:
Timeless (Lucy, Wyatt, Rufus, Denise)
This show is really charming! I really enjoy the team dynamics, and the way they fell into place relatively quickly. Um, I don’t really have anything specific in mind to request; I don’t really ship anybody on this show beyond whatever’s already canon, I’m really into the strength of each of the platonic relationships and how openly fond the team is of each other, even in times and places it’s probably not great to be hugging, they hug anyway, fuck propriety. If you wanted to write full-on casefic, I’d be thrilled, but I’d also be happy with banter and trying to figure things out from any particular point they land in history.
I’m not looking for issuefic at all even remotely, but I do love history and finding out things that are outside of the standard white-straight-men history, and I love that this show has shown Katherine Johnson, Bass Reeves, and Josephine Baker, as well as being pretty honest about the fact that if you don’t look like Wyatt, any point in history other than the present can really fucking suck (and the present isn’t so great about that either). So if you’ve got a fave piece of history or someone who gets overlooked and would love to write a story where they get a visit, I’d love to read it! (Again, though, cannot overstate how much a DNW issuefic is; if you just can’t see a way to write something like this without it turning into a lecture on identity politics, maybe veer away from this one. Trust me, Rufus knows from experience, Lucy wrote the critical theory papers in grad school, and so have I, so probably no one is here for more than Francis Fukuyama jokes. Although if you are in the particular position of making Fukuyama jokes, I love you.)
Non-team wise, I am definitely interested by Denise Christopher and the role she plays, especially towards the end of the season as she gets outside the bounds of the law and her job requirements. I was surprised and happy that she invited Lucy to her home to meet her family, and that she has that concern that she could end up like Lucy, losing her wife and children and never knowing. I’d certainly be intrigued to read a story about their friendship and Lucy checking in to see if anything’s changed.
Metropolis: The Chase Suite - Janelle Monae (Cindi Maywether, DJ Crash Crash, Maestra, Anthony Greendown)So: I am really in love with the whole mythos Janelle Monae has built into her albums, of trans-humanism and love and queerness and the search for justice and joy. And all we get are these bits of reaction to a world in which Cindi Mayweather is a heroine to some and an enemy to others. Probably the biggest draw for me is that this fight, this revolution, is being fought on different levels; those against Cindi and the rest of the noncompliant androids are fighting with violence, and Cindi and the people with her keep calling for actions of not being silent but dancing, singing, finding joy, and most of all, loving. She is in the crosshairs for loving, and she calls for others to choose to love as an action of strategic resistance and a valid or even superior alternative to fighting back?
Honestly, I will be happy with whatever you write me. A vignette about Cindi and how she feels being on the run? Excellent. A lengthy backstory about how she came to be a woman who won’t comply with human society’s rules and commits this giant crime of loving someone, of loving others in general? That is extremely good. How does DJ Crash Crash feel, watching all this stuff going down and trying to contain the damage and advocate for nonviolence? What does Anthony Greendown’s downstairs neighbor think of all this racket? When Cindi’s dealing with being this revolutionary and being on her own, how does being an android shape her experience, when there are some really fundamental ways this makes her mentally and emotionally different from the humans she loves, or the ones who are after her? And even though the central romance is with Anthony, and seems to have its ups and downs, in later albums a lot of songs focus on many types of love for women, so if you feel like digging into some ladies loving ladies in this setting, know that I am one hundo percent here for that.
The Conjuring (Ed and Lorraine)
I just love Ed and Lorraine being utterly in love with each other while ghost hunting, that’s really all it comes down to. I mean, there is no counting how many times I have watched the “Can’t Help Falling in Love” clip from the second movie on repeat when I need to feel better. They may talk about faith in God, but their total faith in each other is what comes through again and again. So while I doubt you signed up for Conjuring for any other reason but writing Ed/Lorraine fluff, since they were the only two characters nominated and I’ve been here in past years when there were some of the other people in the movies, but I just want to say that yes, them being adorable would make me happy in every way. I’d love a casefic where they investigate a haunting together. I’d love how they work together when there ISN’T an emergency and how they figure out just the magic of ordinary life together. They share a passion for helping people who have nowhere else to turn, and problems they may not even be able to articulate to other people, and the Warrens just care so much about not just helping with their needs on the level of a haunting, but also getting elbows deep in a car engine or a plumbing problem; they know that the people they help might need just as much support on making sure their home is livable practically in addition to making it feel like a safe place to have a life.
Other random things you might feel like exploring: what the fuck are they doing with a room full of possessed shit in their house that they live in with their child, why is that there like a lock on the door is going to stop bad spiritual shit from getting out? How does Lorraine feel about having defaced the Bible that clearly is a copy she’s held on to and treasured for years? Both movies have had young girls targeted in the hauntings, and that’s clearly a pathway for empathy since the Warrens have their own young daughter, but do they have plans and ways to protect her from being targeted in the same way?
One final thing I love about the Conjuring movies just in their storytelling: the horror of not being believed is not milked for drama. There are girls and women under attack from things other people can’t see, and the Warrens believe them; when Lorraine knows something or feels something, she tells Ed and he believes her. The two of them communicate, and they believe in the women who tell them something is wrong. It’s strange that a horror series would be a refuge from the tedious fright of this trope, but here we are.
