dear yuletide author!
Oct. 29th, 2012 07:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
suthnoliThank you so much for doing this, and thank you also for your clearly excellent taste in small fandoms. Yay! I am sure I will love whatever you decide to give me!
This is my first year doing Yuletide, so please forgive me if any of this is uselessly vague or irritatingly prescriptive. I have tried to be helpful and thorough! As a result, this is quite a long letter! I hope it helps you out, though, because these are quite broad canons, and/or fandoms where I don’t seem to want quite what a lot of people want!
General tropes/styles I enjoy in fic: people supporting each other (especially through unspoken actions!), fumbly awkward sex that is still thoroughly enjoyed by everybody involved, fic in the same mood/tone as the canon, hugs, unconventional and non-traditional relationships, trinkets and mementoes, traditions and routines, gentle teasing, in-jokes between characters, hugs!, people understanding each other without needing to be good at communication, wit!, found families, hugs, intimacy and (well-placed) trust, feeling comfortable/at home in new places, and anything that involves the press or media (or multimedia!)
Firm things to avoid: I have triggers to do with grief, especially around public grief and commemoration. I realise that’s not very likely to be an issue in most things here, but, just in case. And obviously, this means definitely no character death, please! I can handle a very minor character death if it’s offscreen and/or canonical, and the fic is not about it, but I avoid almost all fic that goes beyond that.
Please no self injury, gore/violence, serious illness, underage or teacher/student relationships, non- and dub-con, or incest. Also, please no kinky sex? I don’t have any objections to it in fic at all; I just really don’t want to read it for any of these fandoms, or for yuletide.
General tropes/styles I don’t care for: anything that drifts in and out, or jumps forward and back in time, or between POVs without making that clear. Ambiguous or unresolved endings. Jealousy or extreme possessiveness, genderswap and ‘always a girl’, amnesia and memory-related angst fic, all sorts of supernatural or fantasy AU, apocalypse scenarios, and secret relationships (where the focus of the fic is on keeping that secret).
I've said Christmas fic would be nice for a few of my requests (because it would be!), so a note about that: characters going to church and such is fine and makes sense (especially in historical settings), but I'm an atheist from an atheist family and so faith has very little to do with why I like Christmas! So if you did choose to do Christmas fic, I’d be very grateful if the emphasis was more on the ‘wintry weather, exchanging presents, crackers and hats’ end of the scale.
Anyway, onwards! Fandoms!
Back Home - Michelle Magorian
[More Rusty! I basically just want more of the book, so anything you can give me about Rusty will make me happy! You could pick up where the book leaves off, fill a gap in the narrative, write a 'deleted scene', tell me what she does with her life when she grows up... knock yourself out. The only thing I am not really interested in is her romantic life. You could also give me a Christmas fic for this fandom!]
I've read and learned quite a lot about the Home Front in WWII and its aftermath because I find it very interesting (and have done since I was little), but I understand that you may well not know lots (or anything!) about it, and I totally get that research isn't everyone’s bag and can be fiddly for getting historic bits and bobs down right, so don’t worry about this too much! I will not be upset or disappointed if anything is a bit wrong or out of place/time! If you do like to research things, though, or already have a solid base of knowledge of the period, I can guarantee I will get super giddy over details.
My favourite thing about Back Home, though, is the strength and integrity of Rusty as a female character (and as a growing child), and I love Beatie and Peggy and Ivy too! I haven’t reread the book in a couple of years, but I love it a lot, and I don’t think you can go far wrong for me if you stay near the text? I’d love to see more of her developing relationship with her mother, or with the children in her new school, or Charlie, etc. Or even just: did she find a new den?
I’d prefer a fic set away from the first school, if you could do that for me? I had enough of a rough time at school to not want to read about other people having a rough time at school, and that is all I will say about that. And if you do include Beatie or Ivy, please mind out for the grief thing.
[Denise/Clara queer fumblings would be an absolute treasure, but I'd also be delighted to see a 'case fic' for this fandom! Or a Christmas story! Much more detail in my letter!]
I am all about the ladies on this show! If you felt inclined to write me Denise and Clara seeking solace in one another’s arms, I would be absolutely over the moon, but any combination of the ladies interacting with each other would also be lovely. I’m only interested in Denise/Clara as a romantic or sexual relationship (and please no Denise/Moray), but I’d love to read more about Pauline, or Katherine Glendenning, or maybe Miss Audrey?
If you’d like to do the equivalent of ‘case fic’ for this fandom, that would also be fun! Again, I’d prefer it to be heavy on Denise and/or Clara, but something involving everybody would be grand—an ‘episode’ revolving around them but with bonus Dudley and Pauline? I don’t know what that would entail because I'm no good at coming up with case fic, but maybe you are! That would be nifty!
I love that this show lets the women be intelligent and brave whilst also being petty, or scheming, or hurt, etc. Despite the episode and the character being rather troubling (‘woman falsely accuses man of inappropriate behaviour’ is not a storyline I ever need or want), I liked the characterisation of Jocelin Brookmire! Anything that lets the ladies be their great selves is good by me, basically.
Even if you go the ‘case’ route, I’d still really rather there not be any Moray or Jonas, and only small doses of Sam (or any of the other gents, to be entirely honest!).
I understand full well that the 1870s were a… distinctly unfun time period for people (and especially ladies!) but I’d really rather the fic not go into that side of things any further than the show has in the first few episodes? By all means, don’t try to paint an unrealistically rosy picture (Clara’s daughter, for example, is fine to include and discuss!), but please don’t dwell on a very dark picture, either.
Speaking of which— Christmas fic would be exciting! A look at the decorating of the shop for seasonal trade, maybe? Or what the characters do with their Christmas day? What presents would they give, and to whom? Is there a staff dinner at the Paradise? Does Denise come up with a seasonal scheme?
Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
[Explore the edges! Tell me unknown things! Show me how things work! Or how they broke!]
This is a risky one for me to request because I have very strong feelings about the canon (the novel and the play), and it’s very important to me. However, you have offered it, so I am sure you will do a fine job! And I will not be angry or upset or anything if it’s not right for me, so please don’t worry!
One thing I would really be interested to see is an exploration of the future for Peter and the Darlings as established in the last chapter, ‘When Wendy Grew Up’. Are young Darling girls still sailing out of their windows every Spring in the present day? If not, when or why did they stop? I don’t want Peter to grow up, but I wonder how he would adapt if a Darling child turned him down flat, or if he was unable to open a window, or there were no more Darling children, etc. I am not that interested in Peter’s eternal childhood as a concept, but I am ever so curious about how it all shakes out for him and for everyone else around him! Poor kid.
(I read and enjoyed Geraldine McCaughrean's Peter Pan In Scarlet, but there’s absolutely no need to acknowledge it for anything.)
Another idea that would knock my socks right off would be to use something from JM Barrie’s dedication to Peter Pan, ‘To The Five’ (here on Project Gutenberg) to make something new. If anything, I care more about JMB than I do about Peter Pan, so it would be a real joy to read a Peter Pan story based on one of the ideas Barrie got from the Llewelyn Davies boys but didn't use. And write however you like! Write poetry, should you please! Write whatever! I think the dedication itself has a lyrical quality, so that might be fun to play with.
If either of those seems a bit much, well, I don’t blame you at all! I would also enjoy a straightforward character study— Mr or Mrs Darling would be lovely, or even a look at Hook’s schooldays, if that appeals to you? Or something about the Lost Boys learning to live in the ‘real world’ after their childhood/lifetime in Neverland? Anything that starts close to the novel’s canon and then works outwards would be charming and interesting.
One thing I definitely and firmly do NOT want to be touched on in the fic is the Indians. They certainly have their moments of awesome and such in the novel, but they are also racist caricatures and I think they are best left well out of things here.
I'd really only like to read gen for this fandom, and no relationship fics, so I hope that’s not an obstacle for you. I also don’t have any real interest in reading more about the Darling children’s time in Neverland, or anything else covered fully within the novel. I'm much more keen to explore the edges of the story and beyond—things that are hinted at, or skimmed past, or not mentioned at all! Do something that seems fun or curious to you.
April! Ann! Andy! Some mixture of these three, please! But not Andy and Ann in a relationship, please! And not a threesome. April/Ann friendship, or April/Ann sexytimes! Or just general April/Andy relationship stuff and sex stuff! Parks and Recreation is my happy place, though, so please no conflict between the characters, and especially no infidelity or love triangles, etc. I would rather any romantic April/Ann relationship to have developed after Andy and April had split up amicably, or in an AU in which they never got together at all. I don’t have any plot ideas, I'm afraid. I'd just like something very sweet!
I really like seeing strong and happy friendships between characters in fic, so anybody else you want to include from the major characters is fine by me, except please no Chris Traeger! Leslie would be especially lovely to see, but not as a major character. Maybe Ann could phone her to talk through her feelings for April, or Andy could ask her for help picking out a present for April? Or both! Or neither!
I would ideally rather not have a Christmas fic for this fandom, because we have such great Christmas episodes already, but! If you’re really stuck and would like to do Christmas fic, something fluffy and snowy and cosy would be just fine with me.
I love Pawnee very much, so would rather you don’t write an AU that isn’t Pawnee, but if you could also write Pawnee without the recurring fat jokes the shows seems to love so much, that would be extra lovely!
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