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Yuletide 2011
Dear Yuletide writer:
I am tremendously excited to read whatever you decide to write; Yuletide is my favorite time of year, seriously. A few notes on general likes/dislikes -- I love friendships and found family and people caring about each other, and I'm a sucker for the occasional hurt/comfort. I'm chill with violence and/or sex scenes as long as they work in the context of the story. I tend to prefer stories that mesh well with the general feeling of the source canon; ie: not taking a light-hearted sitcom canon and writing a darkfic of torture and death and maimery. I love the funnies and the warm moments, but if it matches with the canon's feel, I can absolutely go for sadder, darker stuff as well. Go with your own judgment and have fun writing, and I will be a super happy camper!
Just as a general fyi, I selected only one or two characters per fandom while filling out my sign-up, but please don't take that as a sign that I will, like, HULK OUT if you write something that also features other characters! I have warm fuzzy feelings about all of these fandoms and all of these characters, and would love for any of them to be included as you see fit; I just picked my absolute 'oh, please make sure that [x character] is in the story!' favorites while signing up! Second -- slightly more random -- FYI, which is mostly sparked by the fact that I've had this question before while writing for other people: I would be totally fine with a holiday story if that's the direction you decide to go in. If you're someone who likes to get their stalk on, I can be found being inarticulate with ~*feelings*~ at AO3 and on Tumblr, and some past Yuletide letters (some of which I, uh, cribbed liberally from for this one) are here and here.
Things that are not generally my bag: alternate universe fic (except for Groundhog Day style fics; they are my AU achilles heel), mpreg, sex without plot, incest, BDSM themes, explicit nonconsensual sex or explicit sex of dubious consent, character bashing, slut shaming, female characters being reduced to bitches or damsels in distress.
And here is where I ramble a little bit about prompt ideas, but mostly about my feelings on these canons and these characters, which may or may not be helpful! I threw a couple of animated gifs in, just as a warning. I am a chronic over-talker, so if you're someone who prefers to work with less outside detail, you can definitely stop reading this letter here!
Hellboy (movies)
Liz Sherman
(gif source)
I'm not sure I can textually render how strong my feelings about Elizabeth Sherman are. THEY'RE REALLY STRONG. I just love her, a lot. I love her dry delivery and the way that you can steadily watch her accept herself and come into her own throughout the course of the first movie, and how very bad-ass awesome and confident she is by the time the second one rolls around. I love that she is tiny and authoritative and a secret agent and essentially a reluctant superhero and COULD END YOU/EVERYONE. "You should be running" gives me chills every time. This is my request where angst would be totally fine and in keeping with the canon; Liz can be kind of an angstbucket! Which I say with all the love in the world. Her backstory is the saddest fucking thing.
ANYWAY: I really like that she's whip-smart and strong and self-possessed and capable and snappy and acerbic, even while self-doubting and afraid of hurting people, and I would love a story about her. I'm interested in who she is and what her past was like, or in her relationship to her fire and how she can and can't control it, or in the inner workings of the BPRD and what missions are like (worldbuilding or creepy case-fic could be cool! the Hellboy world leaves a lot of interesting things open, especially in RE: its supernatural aspects), or ... anything you can come up with! When it comes to her relationship with Hellboy, for the record, I ship it like burning; I'd be delighted with gen-fic or 'ship-fic, whatever you decide.
The Kane Chronicles - Rick Riordan
Sadie Kane
In all honesty, I stumbled across The Kane Chronicles because I wanted Rick Riordan to sign my Percy Jackson books and I had to buy The Red Pyramid to get into the signing. All's well that ends well, though, because I wound up buying both of the books and falling in love with Sadie, Carter, Bast, Zia, and the entire gang (and with the world-building; Egyptian mythology!!!), but especially with Sadie. I would just really love fic of some sort about Sadie, especially that deals with or mentions her London roots, as I'm currently living in the city and I have to admit that my favorite parts of the books were when Sadie and her friends were being chased through London and I got to read about a giant baboon god careening past familiar landmarks and tearing Waterloo to pieces.
Sadie's stubbornness and smarts and pride and strong, independent, suspicious, sometimes-brash-pain-in-the-ass attitude really endeared her to me when I was reading the books, so any Sadie-centric fic at all would be aces! I love how powerful she is, too, and her relationship with Carter, and that, between the two of them, the brother is really the thinker and the sister is the bruiser. I also think it's awesome that the Kane Chronicles is a YA series where the two leads are multiracial characters of color, and that Riordan actually delves into the ways that Sadie and Carter are treated differently because she gets coded as white and he gets coded as black.
Victorious
Jade West & Beck Oliver
If you're not getting the picture here yet, I really appreciate antisocial kickass ladies who sometimes have anger problems! I find Jade both vaguely terrifying and hysterically funny. I love how tough and cynical and murderous she is, and how much she loves gross things and being mean, and that she does begrudgingly have a heart under it all (that little scene in "Jade Gets Crushed" where she's just talking and laughing with Andre was really sweet and fun, even if I would never want to see her lose her edge on a daily basis). I love how unlikely her relationship with Beck is on the surface, and how he softens her a little while she still remains herself and how she manages to dig into his affable, unflappable zen thing sometimes, and I love how much they love each other despite the fact that they'll never be a heart-shaped-box-of-chocolates kind of couple. I love their old-married vibe, too; how well they know each other and how easily they respond to one another, and how dysfunctional-yet-totally-functional they are. Watching the show with an eagle eye for their small touches and glances in background shots is one of my favorite pasttimes. Any kind of a look at what they're like together would delight me!
I should probably take a time out here to mention that I have a conflicted relationship with Victorious. I love the idea of a show about a diverse, talented cast of teenagers who are friends and write/sing awesomely cheesy pop songs at a Los Angeles performing arts high school, but I often find myself cringing at the actual show. Some of my issues are relatively -- well-it's-Nickelodeon things (like that it's a Los Angeles performing arts high school without a single visibly queer character; unfortunately, I really don't think Nick is going to go there anytime in the near future), but others are more immediate and deal with the writing. I don't want to get too negative in my letter for what's a super positive experience, but the show makes problematic 'jokes' (the transphobic comment about 'Uncle Barbara,' complete with scare-quotes, in "A Film by Dale Squires"; the season 1 bipolar jokes about Cat) that I'd rather not see repeated. And I especially -- in that it happens often enough to basically be a recurring theme -- cringe at the “creepy dude creeping on/touching girls” weird-sexism-as-a-punchline humor, where all of the nerdy dudes who appear are sketchy and they actually stalk the girls and it’s treated as something that's funny.
If you want to tackle any of that, in terms of addressing it in what you write, (1) you are a brave soul, and (2) I'm in. In general, I would just ask that, stuff like Robbie sitting in the bushes outside Tori's house, or literally refusing to take 'no' for an answer and following Trina around when she repeatedly says she doesn't want to date him, or having life-sized cardboard cutouts of Cat, or Sinjin creepily touching Tori's hair -- that you don't use that kind of stuff as comedic material, because I tend to find it upsetting. In general, I'm fine with the inclusion of -isms in fiction as long as they're problematized by the narrative, which, on Victorious, they're typically not.
Does that make sense? Gosh, I hope that makes sense and isn't super scary or limiting! I just want everyone to be bros and respect each others' boundaries!
So: Beck/Jade-and/or-assorted-friendships fic! I'm a big fan of Jade, Beck, Cat, Andre, and Tori, and would happily read about any combination of them together. Including characters other than the ones I've listed there is totally cool as well; I would just request the limitation of Rex-the-puppet as much as possible. As for prompts: one idea would be some kind of a situation where the spotlight is on a different character than usual! I love Tori, but because the show is a vehicle for Victoria Justice, she does tend to get all of the lead roles in plays and all of the solos and things like that, so it could be interesting to see someone else in the limelight!
In conclusion: NOOGIES!!!
(gif source)
(I love that she lets him get away with this shit when she would take anyone else's hand off for even attempting it, and I love how much he loves messing with her and getting under her skin, and in conclusion I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS.)
You Belong With Me - University of Rochester Yellowjackets (music video)
Jock Guy & Glasses Guy
This is the request where, if you were assigned one of the other three fandoms and my letter has scared the crap out of you (please don't be scared! I like to err on the side of more information than less, figuring that people can take what is helpful to them and just toss out the rest!), this one is very easy to take on! Here is the full canon, right here.
This is the Taylor Swift original that's being remade shot-for-shot here, and here is a post that I made with some screencaps and general shrieking. And yet another link: the live version of the song, which is how I first became familiar with the video and features some pretty great audience reactions.
The video just flat out makes me happy! I would prefer something based on the music video rather than borderline RPF about the a capella group that performed it; otherwise, seriously, go to town. I love the delighted/longing faces of Glasses-Wearing Dude, and the good-natured geniality of the baseball player and how it turns out at the end that maybe he wasn't as oblivious as Glasses maybe thought he was. If you want to do something in the early stages of their friendship, with a crush (or crushes) growing, that would be awesome; so would exploring what's going on during the video, or following them through the scene at the dance, or what happens afterward, or -- for real, do whatever you'd like! The sum total of the "canon" is like four minutes long, and I just love seeing what sorts of things different people come up with based on it.
I didn't put her in the character list, but I'm 100% okay with the inclusion of the girl, and/or with making up a whole cast of characters! My one request is that she's not basically turned into The Devil. The practice of demonizing the woman who's in the way of two dudes getting together makes me sad! I know it's kind of a tall order, given how rude/unpleasant she generally seems in the video (and how rude/unpleasant Taylor Swift's cheerleader character was in the original), and I'm certainly not asking for her to be a bright sunshiney sweetheart who wants to braid the guys' hair, but just the tiniest shred of humanity or narrative empathy would go a long, long way! Oh, and for the record, I know that some of the stuff in the video is conflicting/a little unexpected (the fact that the Taylor Swift guy seems to live in a young girl's bedroom jumps out at me), so please know that I'm not at all a stickler for trying to force things to make sense. Play with/disregard details however you'd like!
I am an incredible sucker for seemingly unrequited love that, it turns out, is requited after all, and for solid jock/dork friendships and romances, especially when the jock turns out to be pretty dorky, too.
IN CONCLUSION: I hope this letter was helpful and not overwhelming, Yuletide writer. Please trust me when I say that I will deeply appreciate and love anything that you write for me. Yuletide is a highlight of my year, every year, and just the knowledge that someone has taken the time to craft something especially for me is enough to make my cup runneth over. You really, really should not worry about how much I babble/rant when I'm given opportunities to talk about fandoms that I love; I cannot emphasize enough how happy I am that you're doing Yuletide and you love one of my fandoms enough to write in it!
I am tremendously excited to read whatever you decide to write; Yuletide is my favorite time of year, seriously. A few notes on general likes/dislikes -- I love friendships and found family and people caring about each other, and I'm a sucker for the occasional hurt/comfort. I'm chill with violence and/or sex scenes as long as they work in the context of the story. I tend to prefer stories that mesh well with the general feeling of the source canon; ie: not taking a light-hearted sitcom canon and writing a darkfic of torture and death and maimery. I love the funnies and the warm moments, but if it matches with the canon's feel, I can absolutely go for sadder, darker stuff as well. Go with your own judgment and have fun writing, and I will be a super happy camper!
Just as a general fyi, I selected only one or two characters per fandom while filling out my sign-up, but please don't take that as a sign that I will, like, HULK OUT if you write something that also features other characters! I have warm fuzzy feelings about all of these fandoms and all of these characters, and would love for any of them to be included as you see fit; I just picked my absolute 'oh, please make sure that [x character] is in the story!' favorites while signing up! Second -- slightly more random -- FYI, which is mostly sparked by the fact that I've had this question before while writing for other people: I would be totally fine with a holiday story if that's the direction you decide to go in. If you're someone who likes to get their stalk on, I can be found being inarticulate with ~*feelings*~ at AO3 and on Tumblr, and some past Yuletide letters (some of which I, uh, cribbed liberally from for this one) are here and here.
Things that are not generally my bag: alternate universe fic (except for Groundhog Day style fics; they are my AU achilles heel), mpreg, sex without plot, incest, BDSM themes, explicit nonconsensual sex or explicit sex of dubious consent, character bashing, slut shaming, female characters being reduced to bitches or damsels in distress.
And here is where I ramble a little bit about prompt ideas, but mostly about my feelings on these canons and these characters, which may or may not be helpful! I threw a couple of animated gifs in, just as a warning. I am a chronic over-talker, so if you're someone who prefers to work with less outside detail, you can definitely stop reading this letter here!
Hellboy (movies)
Liz Sherman
(gif source)
I'm not sure I can textually render how strong my feelings about Elizabeth Sherman are. THEY'RE REALLY STRONG. I just love her, a lot. I love her dry delivery and the way that you can steadily watch her accept herself and come into her own throughout the course of the first movie, and how very bad-ass awesome and confident she is by the time the second one rolls around. I love that she is tiny and authoritative and a secret agent and essentially a reluctant superhero and COULD END YOU/EVERYONE. "You should be running" gives me chills every time. This is my request where angst would be totally fine and in keeping with the canon; Liz can be kind of an angstbucket! Which I say with all the love in the world. Her backstory is the saddest fucking thing.
ANYWAY: I really like that she's whip-smart and strong and self-possessed and capable and snappy and acerbic, even while self-doubting and afraid of hurting people, and I would love a story about her. I'm interested in who she is and what her past was like, or in her relationship to her fire and how she can and can't control it, or in the inner workings of the BPRD and what missions are like (worldbuilding or creepy case-fic could be cool! the Hellboy world leaves a lot of interesting things open, especially in RE: its supernatural aspects), or ... anything you can come up with! When it comes to her relationship with Hellboy, for the record, I ship it like burning; I'd be delighted with gen-fic or 'ship-fic, whatever you decide.
The Kane Chronicles - Rick Riordan
Sadie Kane
In all honesty, I stumbled across The Kane Chronicles because I wanted Rick Riordan to sign my Percy Jackson books and I had to buy The Red Pyramid to get into the signing. All's well that ends well, though, because I wound up buying both of the books and falling in love with Sadie, Carter, Bast, Zia, and the entire gang (and with the world-building; Egyptian mythology!!!), but especially with Sadie. I would just really love fic of some sort about Sadie, especially that deals with or mentions her London roots, as I'm currently living in the city and I have to admit that my favorite parts of the books were when Sadie and her friends were being chased through London and I got to read about a giant baboon god careening past familiar landmarks and tearing Waterloo to pieces.
Sadie's stubbornness and smarts and pride and strong, independent, suspicious, sometimes-brash-pain-in-the-ass attitude really endeared her to me when I was reading the books, so any Sadie-centric fic at all would be aces! I love how powerful she is, too, and her relationship with Carter, and that, between the two of them, the brother is really the thinker and the sister is the bruiser. I also think it's awesome that the Kane Chronicles is a YA series where the two leads are multiracial characters of color, and that Riordan actually delves into the ways that Sadie and Carter are treated differently because she gets coded as white and he gets coded as black.
Victorious
Jade West & Beck Oliver
If you're not getting the picture here yet, I really appreciate antisocial kickass ladies who sometimes have anger problems! I find Jade both vaguely terrifying and hysterically funny. I love how tough and cynical and murderous she is, and how much she loves gross things and being mean, and that she does begrudgingly have a heart under it all (that little scene in "Jade Gets Crushed" where she's just talking and laughing with Andre was really sweet and fun, even if I would never want to see her lose her edge on a daily basis). I love how unlikely her relationship with Beck is on the surface, and how he softens her a little while she still remains herself and how she manages to dig into his affable, unflappable zen thing sometimes, and I love how much they love each other despite the fact that they'll never be a heart-shaped-box-of-chocolates kind of couple. I love their old-married vibe, too; how well they know each other and how easily they respond to one another, and how dysfunctional-yet-totally-functional they are. Watching the show with an eagle eye for their small touches and glances in background shots is one of my favorite pasttimes. Any kind of a look at what they're like together would delight me!
I should probably take a time out here to mention that I have a conflicted relationship with Victorious. I love the idea of a show about a diverse, talented cast of teenagers who are friends and write/sing awesomely cheesy pop songs at a Los Angeles performing arts high school, but I often find myself cringing at the actual show. Some of my issues are relatively -- well-it's-Nickelodeon things (like that it's a Los Angeles performing arts high school without a single visibly queer character; unfortunately, I really don't think Nick is going to go there anytime in the near future), but others are more immediate and deal with the writing. I don't want to get too negative in my letter for what's a super positive experience, but the show makes problematic 'jokes' (the transphobic comment about 'Uncle Barbara,' complete with scare-quotes, in "A Film by Dale Squires"; the season 1 bipolar jokes about Cat) that I'd rather not see repeated. And I especially -- in that it happens often enough to basically be a recurring theme -- cringe at the “creepy dude creeping on/touching girls” weird-sexism-as-a-punchline humor, where all of the nerdy dudes who appear are sketchy and they actually stalk the girls and it’s treated as something that's funny.
If you want to tackle any of that, in terms of addressing it in what you write, (1) you are a brave soul, and (2) I'm in. In general, I would just ask that, stuff like Robbie sitting in the bushes outside Tori's house, or literally refusing to take 'no' for an answer and following Trina around when she repeatedly says she doesn't want to date him, or having life-sized cardboard cutouts of Cat, or Sinjin creepily touching Tori's hair -- that you don't use that kind of stuff as comedic material, because I tend to find it upsetting. In general, I'm fine with the inclusion of -isms in fiction as long as they're problematized by the narrative, which, on Victorious, they're typically not.
Does that make sense? Gosh, I hope that makes sense and isn't super scary or limiting! I just want everyone to be bros and respect each others' boundaries!
So: Beck/Jade-and/or-assorted-friendships fic! I'm a big fan of Jade, Beck, Cat, Andre, and Tori, and would happily read about any combination of them together. Including characters other than the ones I've listed there is totally cool as well; I would just request the limitation of Rex-the-puppet as much as possible. As for prompts: one idea would be some kind of a situation where the spotlight is on a different character than usual! I love Tori, but because the show is a vehicle for Victoria Justice, she does tend to get all of the lead roles in plays and all of the solos and things like that, so it could be interesting to see someone else in the limelight!
In conclusion: NOOGIES!!!
(gif source)
(I love that she lets him get away with this shit when she would take anyone else's hand off for even attempting it, and I love how much he loves messing with her and getting under her skin, and in conclusion I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS.)
You Belong With Me - University of Rochester Yellowjackets (music video)
Jock Guy & Glasses Guy
This is the request where, if you were assigned one of the other three fandoms and my letter has scared the crap out of you (please don't be scared! I like to err on the side of more information than less, figuring that people can take what is helpful to them and just toss out the rest!), this one is very easy to take on! Here is the full canon, right here.
This is the Taylor Swift original that's being remade shot-for-shot here, and here is a post that I made with some screencaps and general shrieking. And yet another link: the live version of the song, which is how I first became familiar with the video and features some pretty great audience reactions.
The video just flat out makes me happy! I would prefer something based on the music video rather than borderline RPF about the a capella group that performed it; otherwise, seriously, go to town. I love the delighted/longing faces of Glasses-Wearing Dude, and the good-natured geniality of the baseball player and how it turns out at the end that maybe he wasn't as oblivious as Glasses maybe thought he was. If you want to do something in the early stages of their friendship, with a crush (or crushes) growing, that would be awesome; so would exploring what's going on during the video, or following them through the scene at the dance, or what happens afterward, or -- for real, do whatever you'd like! The sum total of the "canon" is like four minutes long, and I just love seeing what sorts of things different people come up with based on it.
I didn't put her in the character list, but I'm 100% okay with the inclusion of the girl, and/or with making up a whole cast of characters! My one request is that she's not basically turned into The Devil. The practice of demonizing the woman who's in the way of two dudes getting together makes me sad! I know it's kind of a tall order, given how rude/unpleasant she generally seems in the video (and how rude/unpleasant Taylor Swift's cheerleader character was in the original), and I'm certainly not asking for her to be a bright sunshiney sweetheart who wants to braid the guys' hair, but just the tiniest shred of humanity or narrative empathy would go a long, long way! Oh, and for the record, I know that some of the stuff in the video is conflicting/a little unexpected (the fact that the Taylor Swift guy seems to live in a young girl's bedroom jumps out at me), so please know that I'm not at all a stickler for trying to force things to make sense. Play with/disregard details however you'd like!
I am an incredible sucker for seemingly unrequited love that, it turns out, is requited after all, and for solid jock/dork friendships and romances, especially when the jock turns out to be pretty dorky, too.
IN CONCLUSION: I hope this letter was helpful and not overwhelming, Yuletide writer. Please trust me when I say that I will deeply appreciate and love anything that you write for me. Yuletide is a highlight of my year, every year, and just the knowledge that someone has taken the time to craft something especially for me is enough to make my cup runneth over. You really, really should not worry about how much I babble/rant when I'm given opportunities to talk about fandoms that I love; I cannot emphasize enough how happy I am that you're doing Yuletide and you love one of my fandoms enough to write in it!
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u craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy
/iamsotired
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