Dear Yuletide Writer 2023
Oct. 12th, 2023 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evewithanappleThank you for writing for me!
I did not actually plan on requesting mostly books for Yuletide this year, but in a way, I think that's almost more exciting in terms of matching - if we both sat down with a 300+ page novel and were excited enough about it to seek out/write fic, we must vibe on some level. And while the canons I'm requesting fall all across the spectrum in terms of content, characters, and form, I find that they all kind of fall in with a lot of my favourite narratives: namely, people who believe in each other, or in something bigger than themselves, finding each other as a result of that belief. I love, love, love stories about trying to build a better world, especially when the characters doing it are sort of on the outside looking in - they're in a situation where nobody thinks they matter, but they're still determined to make some kind of difference, even if it's only in their tiny sphere of influence.
I guess you could call it "found family -" certainly I'm into stories where people build themselves a home when the home they were born into is hostile - but I feel like that kind of pigeonholes the type of stories I'm into. What I really love about these stories is the sense of finding belonging, often finding it within a greater cause or purpose. None of this is to say you have to write a political manifesto (please don't feel pressured to do that!) but the thing I see in all the fandoms/pairings I requested is hope - hope for belonging, hope for the future, hope for each other.
I am, for the record, 110% down for Yuleporn. I'm also down for G-rated fluff, if that's what gets your writing engine going! Also note that, in any of the m/f pairings, I would be VERY into rule 63 making them f/f.
More general likes and DNWs (these are just suggestions - again, don't feel pressured to include all of them!):
LIKES:
-loyalty kink
-hurt/comfort
-established relationships
-family fic - I'm not sure what the precise term for this would be? Not kidfic, exactly, but stories where the characters have formed a family unit, which may or may not include having/raising kids. So yeah, I guess kidfic.
-cuddling
-history! If you're a nerd for any of the periods these canons take place in, please go nuts with the background detail. Tell me all about what political pamphlets are getting passed around Montmartre, or the makeup techniques Kiya, Nefertiti, and Akhenaten are using. I want it all.
DNWs:
-animal death/abuse
-incest
-character death
-A/B/O
-modern AUs (if canon is fantasy/historical)
-noncon/dubcon
When The Angels Left The Old Country
Little Ash (When the Angels Left the Old Country), Uriel (When the Angels Left the Old Country)
This book was an absolutely delightful surprise to me, and one of my favourites of last year. I've always been fascinated by turn-of-the-century American labour history (I wrote a term paper on it in undergrad) so of course the setting had me glued to the book. And as a friends-to-lovers connoisseur, I was giggling and kicking my feet over Little Ash and Uriel all the way through. I always love relationship dynamics where the characters change each other - where they start in one place, and then their feelings for their partner steer them towards becoming a better person. And that's obviously the arc for these two, in both directions. I also loved how much of their partnership was built on scholarship, because I am a nerd at heart and I find nerdy arguments over the finer points of history/religion extremely romantic. Of course, that's not the only romance they've got going on - they deserve their chance to go dancing! Truly anything infused with the spirit of the book would make me happy, because "queer angel/demons interact with turn-of-the-century socialists" is already such a perfect pitch, I just want to curl up in the middle of it and stay there.
Wrath Goddess Sing - Maya Deane
Kiya (Wrath Goddess Sing - Maya Deane), Meryaten Neferkheperura-wa-enra Akhenaten (Wrath Goddess Sing - Maya Deane), Neferneferuaten Nefertiti (Wrath Goddess Sing - Maya Deane)
I hadn't thought to nominate this, but I jumped up and down with glee when I saw that someone had, because the Kiya story was my FAVOURITE part of the book. There's a fair bit of scholarship on the Joseph story being genderqueer or trans (see Rabbi Dayna Ruttenberg, "(Gender)queering Joseph: Midrashic Possibilities for the Torah's Most Extra Child" and Kittredge Cherry, "Joseph and the queer Biblical princess dress") which Deane is obviously familiar with; then there's the Nefertiti and Akhenaten history, which is one of the most fascinating periods of ancient Egyptian history to me. So you can imagine how excited I was when I read this chapter! And then Deane takes these two stories, which are both compelling in their own right, and blends them to make a trans poly romance about attempting to overthrow the old religious order? Serve me up a giant plate of catnip, why don't you.
As I said above, this story dovetails into so many of my interests - struggling with faith and religion and what that means to both individuals and a society, people pushing the boundaries of what they want the world to look like, stories on the margin of history - really, anything with this setup would please me. Kiya's journey into Egypt and how she wound up meeting Nefertiti and Akhenaten; the progress of their relationship; how they view their respective faiths (did Kiya's adherence to an Abrahamic religion influence the monotheism of Atenism?); the golden age where it looked like everything was going to work and they had managed to remake the world; how much Kiya was involved in court politics as part of Akhenaten and Nefertiti's marriage (was she recognized officially as a consort? Was she a co-parent to the royal children, and what did that mean to her as a trans woman who, like Achilles, hadn't expected to be able to have children of her own?) even the extent to which the actual gods (since we know that they exist in this universe and happily meddle in human affairs) spoke directly to the three of them - just truly, anything about this triad and their attempts to change the world would thrill me to no end.
I hadn't thought to nominate this, but I jumped up and down with glee when I saw that someone had, because the Kiya story was my FAVOURITE part of the book. There's a fair bit of scholarship on the Joseph story being genderqueer or trans (see Rabbi Dayna Ruttenberg, "(Gender)queering Joseph: Midrashic Possibilities for the Torah's Most Extra Child" and Kittredge Cherry, "Joseph and the queer Biblical princess dress") which Deane is obviously familiar with; then there's the Nefertiti and Akhenaten history, which is one of the most fascinating periods of ancient Egyptian history to me. So you can imagine how excited I was when I read this chapter! And then Deane takes these two stories, which are both compelling in their own right, and blends them to make a trans poly romance about attempting to overthrow the old religious order? Serve me up a giant plate of catnip, why don't you.
As I said above, this story dovetails into so many of my interests - struggling with faith and religion and what that means to both individuals and a society, people pushing the boundaries of what they want the world to look like, stories on the margin of history - really, anything with this setup would please me. Kiya's journey into Egypt and how she wound up meeting Nefertiti and Akhenaten; the progress of their relationship; how they view their respective faiths (did Kiya's adherence to an Abrahamic religion influence the monotheism of Atenism?); the golden age where it looked like everything was going to work and they had managed to remake the world; how much Kiya was involved in court politics as part of Akhenaten and Nefertiti's marriage (was she recognized officially as a consort? Was she a co-parent to the royal children, and what did that mean to her as a trans woman who, like Achilles, hadn't expected to be able to have children of her own?) even the extent to which the actual gods (since we know that they exist in this universe and happily meddle in human affairs) spoke directly to the three of them - just truly, anything about this triad and their attempts to change the world would thrill me to no end.
A Long Time Dead
Carmen (A Long Time Dead), Poppy Cavendish, Roisin (A Long Time Dead)
Oh, this book was written FOR ME. I was a Vampire Chronicles girlie as a teenager, but it always bummed me out that there were so many dicks on the dance floor. And then! A gothic lesbian vampire romance! [insert "I'm so used to giving and now I get to receive" gif here]
Obviously I adore Poppy and Roisin, and would love to read anything about their relationship - what do they go on to do after the end of the book, once Cane is defeated and they don't have that hanging over their heads anymore? Do they travel? Mingle with broader society? The book ends right around the time the aesthetic and decadent movements were in vogue, with people like Oscar Wilde and Algernon Swinburne publishing their (fairly taboo, frequently gay) poems - do Poppy and Roisin interact with them at all? I'd also be really interested in reading about both of their relationships with Carmen - I loved her situationship with Poppy, and I felt kind of bad for her being the odd one out at the end, so if you wanted to go in a Poppy/Roisin/Carmen direction with it, I certainly wouldn't be opposed. But in general I just love this book and these characters, and I want to spend more time with them, in whatever shape that takes.
Oh, this book was written FOR ME. I was a Vampire Chronicles girlie as a teenager, but it always bummed me out that there were so many dicks on the dance floor. And then! A gothic lesbian vampire romance! [insert "I'm so used to giving and now I get to receive" gif here]
Obviously I adore Poppy and Roisin, and would love to read anything about their relationship - what do they go on to do after the end of the book, once Cane is defeated and they don't have that hanging over their heads anymore? Do they travel? Mingle with broader society? The book ends right around the time the aesthetic and decadent movements were in vogue, with people like Oscar Wilde and Algernon Swinburne publishing their (fairly taboo, frequently gay) poems - do Poppy and Roisin interact with them at all? I'd also be really interested in reading about both of their relationships with Carmen - I loved her situationship with Poppy, and I felt kind of bad for her being the odd one out at the end, so if you wanted to go in a Poppy/Roisin/Carmen direction with it, I certainly wouldn't be opposed. But in general I just love this book and these characters, and I want to spend more time with them, in whatever shape that takes.
Anastasia
Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 Movie), Dimitri | Dmitry (Anastasia 1997 Movie)
Moulin Rouge!: The Musical - Various/Logan
Satine (Moulin Rouge Musical), Christian (Moulin Rouge Musical)
One of the things - one of the several things - that I really love about the way that the stage musical updated the movie is the amount of interiority and agency Satine is given within the narrative. She has friends! She has a backstory! She has goals and a struggle and inner conflicts about what she wants vs. what she feels like she has to do to survive! I would be very happy with fix-it fic (you don't necessarily die of tuberculosis right away! You can live for a long time with it! Doc Holliday lasted fifteen years!) and seeing what she might do after the events of the show if she did live.
I love Christian also - bless his heart he is just so earnest and so eager to throw himself into this world and this love affair. He does everything with his whole chest, and it's incredibly endearing. I think that if we were doing a fix-it, he could actually make a great long-term partner to have while dealing with a chronic illness because, as I said, he does nothing by halves. The show talks a lot about love as an ideal, but what does that look like in practice? When they're no longer having a clandestine affair, what does partnership look like for them? And if they're removed from that theatrical, bohemian atmosphere, how do their ideals manifest in the course of a more ordinary life? Of course, if you were to keep the story set in that bohemian world, I'd also love that - as I said above, this period fascinates me (Toulouse-Lautrec! Félix Fénéon! The Salon des Indépendants!) because it was such a transitional one - people were finding new ways to live and to make art, and it was such a glorious explosion of passion and creativity. So I'd love anything along those lines.
(Also - remember I mentioned Rule 63 up above? Well the historical Moulin Rouge was full of lesbians, and Christian honestly kind of has soft butch energy as is, so . . . do with that what you will.)
I love Christian also - bless his heart he is just so earnest and so eager to throw himself into this world and this love affair. He does everything with his whole chest, and it's incredibly endearing. I think that if we were doing a fix-it, he could actually make a great long-term partner to have while dealing with a chronic illness because, as I said, he does nothing by halves. The show talks a lot about love as an ideal, but what does that look like in practice? When they're no longer having a clandestine affair, what does partnership look like for them? And if they're removed from that theatrical, bohemian atmosphere, how do their ideals manifest in the course of a more ordinary life? Of course, if you were to keep the story set in that bohemian world, I'd also love that - as I said above, this period fascinates me (Toulouse-Lautrec! Félix Fénéon! The Salon des Indépendants!) because it was such a transitional one - people were finding new ways to live and to make art, and it was such a glorious explosion of passion and creativity. So I'd love anything along those lines.
(Also - remember I mentioned Rule 63 up above? Well the historical Moulin Rouge was full of lesbians, and Christian honestly kind of has soft butch energy as is, so . . . do with that what you will.)
