dearest yuletide 2019 author
Nov. 3rd, 2019 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hello, author, i'm so excited to crack open my phone on christmas morning for whatever you write for me! I absolutely love Yuletide, and the fact that you ALSO at minimum one (1) of the pieces of media that I also love is, whew, a gift all on its own. I really love all of these canons more or less equally.
My theme, this year and all years, is: queer girls fighting & betraying each other and/or with massive grudges against empire. In space, in the Pacific Northwest, in nebulous fantasy worlds. Wherever, really.
contents:
- housekeeping & general details
- Baru Cormorant - Dickinson
- The Best Bad Things - Carrasco
- Gideon the Ninth - Muir
housekeeping
- Previous letters (there are not many) can be found here.
- My AO3 handle is sternerstuff; it has non-comprehensive public bookmarks.
wants
Totally run absolutely wild; if you love one of these fandoms, I probably want to read about why you love it! These are some dynamics that I really like in stories, though, for reference!
- failed or successful mentorship (particularly the way our personal identities color what we want or expect from other people with those identities)
- good faith miscommunication, resolved or unresolved
- people excelling at their chosen craft (craft VERY loosely defined here -- manipulation is obviously a craft)
- endings that are not The Pair Getting Paired Off, happy or sad
- ambiguous, uncomfortable, and contrary feelings
- girls with swords! girls fighting! obviously!
- secret texts, lost emphera, stories told in marginalia
- complex feelings about polyamory, poorly or well executed polyamory
- hasty momentary reprieves from the war outside
Crossovers: For these fandoms in particular, crossovers between any/all -- dope. Those are tremendously interesting to me (I am also a big HDM fan, if daemons are your jam, fwiw). Any of them sitting down in a bar together with anyone else, getting drunk, and fucking to forget/erase/ignore their feelings as a character study x pornography? Fuck me up, absolute catnip. (pornography not required)
Ratings I like both gen character studies, and 2,000 words of working up to fisting, and everything in between. Really!
I am shippy for canon ships and not much else, though, and for anything E rated I'd prefer it to be shot through with unsaid feelings and ambiguity and people lying to each other. Basically: happy PWP doesn't do it for me. Some specific activities that do do it for me, if you want to: fisting, strapons, hair-pulling, fighting in bed, bantering in bed, slapping -- if you think it's hot and in-character, I can almost guarantee I will too.
do not wants
non-canon-typical intentional dub- or non-con; non-canon-typical violence; a/b/o dynamics or mpreg.
Please let bisexual characters be bisexual!
Ok, generalities over, let's do fandom.
fandoms
Baru Cormorant - Dickinson
I worry about everybody a lot in this 'verse! I have read both Traitor and Monster, but didn't track Monster very well -- which is fun, it means that I would really love to have your analysis of the laman or Tain Shir's motivations or the Kettling or whatever event! injected directly into my basal brain.
Some other things I like:
- Baru/Tain Hu relationship exploration (physical, or flirting with each other, or just, you know, living their beautiful rough lives)
- missing scenes from either book
- internal monologues from most anyone, but Tain Hu and Aminata, especially
- dreaming about a better world from everybody :)
or, if what-ifs are your thing:
- Does Baru ever dare fantasize about Aminata?
- What did Aminata think of young Baru, how did Baru look through her eyes?
- How did Salm/Pinion/Solit meet? Break my heart with their pre-canon polyamory.
- Did Tain Hu have other lovers? Write me her first time, or her fiftieth, or other women she's loved, or 5+1 of making the mistake of loving(?) Baru Fisher.
I'm also happy with fix-its or AUs where Baru gets to be happy for two goddamn motherfucking seconds. Cairdine Farrier, terrifying chain-store coffee shop manager?
The Best Bad Things - Katrina Carrasco
I just want more of this. Pre-canon, post-canon, missing scenes -- let me back in! What I think Carrasco did super super well, and want to see more of particularly from Best Bad was gender. Some specifics:
- Alma's crossdressing gender-bending, and her immense dissatisfaction with gender; the construction of her exterior self and all its forms ("To lacquer on manhood, Alma starts with the hands.")
- the sex scenes, because they were shot through with all this conscious performance of her body! I loved the way she felt got to feel good about a very masculine gender with Delphine and Nell; and how that transmuted with Nathaniel into something absolutely undeniably different. A bisexual queen.
- Nathaniel/Alma was so good; it felt like Nathaniel was the only one to meet Jack/Alma on her own terms. I would love to see this relationship explored more (possibly in a fix-it, if you want to make all my Yuletides come at once)
- also boxing is...very hot.
- final Nathaniel/Alma scene, also very hot.
That said, what does Delphine think about any of this? Does Alma succeed in complicating her gender for/to Delpine and/or Nell? Does her plan to rise up in the ranks work? How does she deal with underlings when she has them, if she has them?
Gideon The Ninth
Man, I haven't had the time to develop all my fannish thinky-thinks on this yet! I've been really enjoying the rapidly-expanding fandom, so I'm glad you're writing for it too :) The tone of Gideon is so much fun; I love the explicit Gideon/Harrow x aggressive banter that never loses the thread of their canon relationship. I love the terrible names of the magazines. I love imagining Harrow as a lovelorn angry 13 year old. If possible, however, I would like to not be hugely bummed out forever, so maybe steer slightly away from the "depressed post-canon Harrow masturbates" genre.
I also am so interested in the world outside the pair! There's so much backstory that isn't detailed -- who are the enemies? Who is the girl in the crypt? Is she really so evil or is this a canon where she's going to have been the real hero all along? Is she aware of Harrow? Can you tell me a story about Harrow's mother as a little girl, when the Ninth was only halfway dead and Aiglamene was young? Or a story about Magnus learning medicine?
no subject
Date: 2019-11-04 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-04 03:38 pm (UTC)Thank you, thank you! It was not even intentional to begin with -- I made my fandoms list and then was like "oh cool, looks like all I care about is iterations on the same story many times over." It's good to know my type.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-04 05:25 pm (UTC)