Dear Yuletide Author (2019)
Oct. 26th, 2019 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleHi! I'm excited you're writing me a story! Thank you for taking on one of these requests.
First up, what I do and don't like in fic. In addition to the like/dislike blocks below, I have fic likes and dislikes tags on Tumblr and here on DW. I'm cool with gen or pairing fic, sex or no sex. I've tried to give you a variety of ideas for each fandom if you want somewhere to start from, but please feel free to go somewhere else with your story if there's something else you want to write. I want this to be fun for you!
Likes: Clothes sharing, d/s, women, relationships between equals, people being smart/competent, people acting like adults, they have to get married, cuddling, happy endings, well-structured endings, kids and babies, dialogue, snappy dialogue, people who are practically married before the romance/sex, slowly developing relationships, relationship negotiations of all kinds, kink negotiation, unconventional parenting arrangements, judicious parceling out of backstory/exposition, people making reproductive choices (no matter what the outcome), werewolves, non-creepy possessiveness, polyamorous/polyamorous V/open/unconventional relationships, nonsexual intimacy (sex is also good), power dynamics, feminist themes.
Dislikes: Embarrassment (especially teenage embarrassment), misogyny, randomly inconsistent pov, abrupt endings, endings that throw out the entire premise of the rest of the story, an overabundance of teenage angst, first person, trope inversions, infodumps, things that are going to make me feel anxious or full of dread while reading (I like things that are prickly and difficult, just not in a doom is coming or embarrassment sort of way), daddykink (I'm not categorically opposed to it; it's just not a thing I want in a story written just for me), graphic on-screen violence (the aftermath of violence is fine).
Now on to specific fandoms:
Once a Thief (TV) - The Director (Once a Thief), Mac Ramsey. My bff and I watched the entire series in a month a couple of years ago, and spent the whole month sending each other emails that said things like, "Whaaaaat?" and, "Who made this show?" and, "This is so ridiculous." It was a good time! The show is ridiculous and fun and wacky. I expected to come out of it shipping Mac/Vic/Li Ann and somehow instead ended up super into The Director/Mac. If you are not into The Director/Mac, I would be into gen or any other pairings as long as the story is mostly about Mac and the The Director. I also nominated Vic and Li Ann, so I am certainly into anything including them.
Specific things I would be into in a story:
Quest For A Maid - Frances Mary Hendry - Meg Wright. This is one of my all-time favorite books. I would love post-canon fic. If you want to turn their story into something like a space AU, I would be into that. I only requested Meg because she's the only one I absolutely want in a story, but I love everyone, so feel free to include any or all of the other characters.
Some specific things I would read:
Rainbow - Kesha (Album). I heard "Praying" and then "Hymn," and I was afraid to listen to the whole album for fear that the rest of it wouldn't live up to those two, but then I fell in love with the whole album and kept getting different songs stuck in my head.
I want to emphasize again that I want you to enjoy writing this! If you offered this because there's something about this album you want to write, please write that.
Here's the weird thing I really want in my heart of hearts: It's the distant future. This album or a few songs from it still exist. Maybe there's a religion built up around it. Maybe the prevailing opinion is that Kesha was some sort of priestess or other maker of sacred music. Maybe there has always been speculation that the same artist who made "Praying" also made "Tik Tok," but now someone has unearthed proof, thus upending the existing academic consensus. Maybe there's some other sort of scholarship around the album or songs from it. There are a lot of things you could do around stories about the people involved in any of those (or other) possibilities! This is also something I think would work really well as an unusual story structure if that's your kind of thing: articles/media clips about the current state of or new advances in Kesha scholarship, an introductory brochure/website/whatever replaces brochures and websites in the far future describing the religion, abstracts from a conference which might include papers about other artists, a student research paper about the album/songs from it, speculation about whether the god Kesha sings about is a male deity or if she was ushering in a goddess religion, or some other type of fictional archival source.
Do not want specific to this fandom: given Kesha's real-life circumstances and the kinds of things you could extrapolate from this album, I am okay with discussion of sexual assault/gender-based violence. I do not want on-screen or graphic sexual assault or gender-based violence.
I hope that gives you some good ideas to start from, and I hope you have a good Yuletide experience! ♥
First up, what I do and don't like in fic. In addition to the like/dislike blocks below, I have fic likes and dislikes tags on Tumblr and here on DW. I'm cool with gen or pairing fic, sex or no sex. I've tried to give you a variety of ideas for each fandom if you want somewhere to start from, but please feel free to go somewhere else with your story if there's something else you want to write. I want this to be fun for you!
Likes: Clothes sharing, d/s, women, relationships between equals, people being smart/competent, people acting like adults, they have to get married, cuddling, happy endings, well-structured endings, kids and babies, dialogue, snappy dialogue, people who are practically married before the romance/sex, slowly developing relationships, relationship negotiations of all kinds, kink negotiation, unconventional parenting arrangements, judicious parceling out of backstory/exposition, people making reproductive choices (no matter what the outcome), werewolves, non-creepy possessiveness, polyamorous/polyamorous V/open/unconventional relationships, nonsexual intimacy (sex is also good), power dynamics, feminist themes.
Dislikes: Embarrassment (especially teenage embarrassment), misogyny, randomly inconsistent pov, abrupt endings, endings that throw out the entire premise of the rest of the story, an overabundance of teenage angst, first person, trope inversions, infodumps, things that are going to make me feel anxious or full of dread while reading (I like things that are prickly and difficult, just not in a doom is coming or embarrassment sort of way), daddykink (I'm not categorically opposed to it; it's just not a thing I want in a story written just for me), graphic on-screen violence (the aftermath of violence is fine).
Now on to specific fandoms:
Once a Thief (TV) - The Director (Once a Thief), Mac Ramsey. My bff and I watched the entire series in a month a couple of years ago, and spent the whole month sending each other emails that said things like, "Whaaaaat?" and, "Who made this show?" and, "This is so ridiculous." It was a good time! The show is ridiculous and fun and wacky. I expected to come out of it shipping Mac/Vic/Li Ann and somehow instead ended up super into The Director/Mac. If you are not into The Director/Mac, I would be into gen or any other pairings as long as the story is mostly about Mac and the The Director. I also nominated Vic and Li Ann, so I am certainly into anything including them.
Specific things I would be into in a story:
- Wacky hijinks of any variety.
- Case fic, ideally involving something strange.
- References to Dobrinsky's love of marching bands.
- Kink. One of the things I loved about the show was how much Mac just went along with The Director's kinkyness.
- Returning to the sex club.
- The team finally seeing The Director's striptease/burlesque performance.
- A return of Special Agent Diller and Special Agent Clansey from the X-Files spoof ep.
Quest For A Maid - Frances Mary Hendry - Meg Wright. This is one of my all-time favorite books. I would love post-canon fic. If you want to turn their story into something like a space AU, I would be into that. I only requested Meg because she's the only one I absolutely want in a story, but I love everyone, so feel free to include any or all of the other characters.
Some specific things I would read:
- Meg and Peem's wedding night.
- The power dynamics of Meg and Peem's relationship.
- The four of them making their way in Germany.
- Meg, Peem, and Davie handling a young man courting Marie.
- Meg's potential for supernatural powers in the aftermath of Inge's death. Do they require worship of the same god as Inge's, or are they a different type? Does she go it alone, or does she find a mentor/teacher?
Rainbow - Kesha (Album). I heard "Praying" and then "Hymn," and I was afraid to listen to the whole album for fear that the rest of it wouldn't live up to those two, but then I fell in love with the whole album and kept getting different songs stuck in my head.
I want to emphasize again that I want you to enjoy writing this! If you offered this because there's something about this album you want to write, please write that.
Here's the weird thing I really want in my heart of hearts: It's the distant future. This album or a few songs from it still exist. Maybe there's a religion built up around it. Maybe the prevailing opinion is that Kesha was some sort of priestess or other maker of sacred music. Maybe there has always been speculation that the same artist who made "Praying" also made "Tik Tok," but now someone has unearthed proof, thus upending the existing academic consensus. Maybe there's some other sort of scholarship around the album or songs from it. There are a lot of things you could do around stories about the people involved in any of those (or other) possibilities! This is also something I think would work really well as an unusual story structure if that's your kind of thing: articles/media clips about the current state of or new advances in Kesha scholarship, an introductory brochure/website/whatever replaces brochures and websites in the far future describing the religion, abstracts from a conference which might include papers about other artists, a student research paper about the album/songs from it, speculation about whether the god Kesha sings about is a male deity or if she was ushering in a goddess religion, or some other type of fictional archival source.
Do not want specific to this fandom: given Kesha's real-life circumstances and the kinds of things you could extrapolate from this album, I am okay with discussion of sexual assault/gender-based violence. I do not want on-screen or graphic sexual assault or gender-based violence.
I hope that gives you some good ideas to start from, and I hope you have a good Yuletide experience! ♥