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Dear Yuletide Author:
Hi! Thanks so much for writing for me, and congratulations on your evident good taste!
If you want to benignly internet-stalk me to get an idea of my interests, Tumblr and AO3 (both linked in the sidebar) are probably a better idea than DW. However, my previous Yuletide-related posts are tagged here.
This year I requested The Comfortable Courtesan, Lord Peter Wimsey, A Brother's Price, Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Le Fruit Défendu, and the Enchanted Forest Chronicles.
A large and random list of things I like in general: worldbuilding, adventure, lesbians, ethical dilemmas, people being clever, twisty plots, gender, sibling or sibling-like relationships, epistolary fic, backstory, hurt/comfort, pining, physical affection, queerness, philosophy, romance, feminism, UST, found families, mythological allusions, polyamory, slash, het, femslash, hidden worlds, cities, banter, complicated plans, beautiful landscapes, angst, puns, magical realism, history, passionate platonic friendships, older women with major roles, case fic, period accuracy, gen, smut, pwp, diversity, secret identities, fairy tales... Feel free to use any of these.
Dislikes: I do not want child-focused fic. I have a major embarrassment squick, I don't like incest, and I'm not interested in graphic depictions of rape or gore or torture. However, I can be sold on most consensual kinks.
Generally I am all for alternate universes, but in these fandoms the setting is a lot of the draw for me, so perhaps not wildly alternate ones.
Fandom specific thoughts and optional details, to be taken more as suggestions and jumping-off points than requests:
The Comfortable Courtesan - Madame C- C- (Available online here.)
Any
I love everything about this story. I love the characters with their own individual strengths and weaknesses and abilities, and how so many of them are excellent at helping other people with their problems and terrible at dealing with their own. I love the casual inclusion of diversity. I also love all of the characters individually.
The only thing I specifically don't want is Eliza's last illness.
Specific prompts, all of them optional if you have a better idea:
More of Mr and Mrs F-'s backstory. Anything about Mrs F- at all, really.
Sandy's or Lord G- R-'s backstory
Things Tibby or Sophy learned from Docket, and the servants' interactions belowstairs
Docket and baby Thomasina
Eliza helping with or inspiring Clorinda's fiction.
Smut in any canon relationship
Details or snippets from Clorinda's novels or plays
Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Sylvia Marriott, Eiluned Price
I am all for Sylvia and Eiluned being sarcastic in the 20s and 30s modernist art scene. I love them and how they interact with Peter and the little we see of them with Harriet. I would love to see more of them and Harriet, or them investigating their own mystery, or just being deeply contemptful of a new movement or artist.
A Brother's Price - Wen Spencer
Any
I'm more interested in worldbuilding than any individual character here, but please don't think I wouldn't also like the story about [canon character] that you've been dreaming of writing. That would be great! The following is just areas you could focus on.
(Except, I don't want to read about Keifer's abuse of the princesses, please.)
Worldbuilding, though. Especially queer worldbuilding. What's it like being gay when you might only meet two or three other men in your life? What happens to a nice respectable boy in a nice respectable marriage who can't perform sexually? Are there boys who have run away and cross-dressed like Shakespearean heroines? (If you want a specific prompt, THIS.) Here, the social difficulties for gay men specifically fascinate me.
I find this book interesting because I think in some ways Spencer still fails to carry through her premise, and falls into our-world stereotypes (for example, Jerin's sisters being more interested in clothes than he is). So feel free to go beyond what's onscreen.
Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms - Mercedes Lackey
Any
Again, what I'm interested in for this is not specifically the characters but the setting and worldbuilding. (Edited to clarify: but please don't think I wouldn't also like the story about [canon character] that you've been dreaming of writing. That would be great! The following is just areas you could focus on.)
I want to know more about stories and the Tradition and especially what Traditional paths exist for queer people and what happens to people who fall into/fight them. There are roles for queer people, or at least heavily coded queer people, in fairy tales, though a lot of them are tragic, and there are also stories of close friendship that are about half an inch away from being queer. What does that look like from the inside if you know about the Tradition? What does it look like if you don't? What does it look like to a Godmother on the outside?
Le Fruit Défendu - Auguste Toulmouche (Available online here.)
Any
Basically what I was thinking when I nominated this was, "Five minutes before the lesbian orgy." Alternatively, they could be researching for their slash fics.
It's the cheerful, collegial attitude toward getting past society's limits on what they're supposed to be accessing that's the draw for me, and that feels very relevant to fandom - the two girls leaning against each other and reading, the smirking girl in the back (with the key to the book cupboards, maybe? It's hard to see. Or maybe she's going to go tell on them.), the girl on the ladder who's looking worriedly over her shoulder but isn't going to let that stop her.
And of course there's also their potential future suitors referred to in the quote from a critic in the linked tumblr post, who may get something of a surprise on the wedding night...
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia C. Wrede
Morwen
Please include any other characters you want as well, I just wanted to make sure Morwen showed up. I like her very practical attitude, I like her ability to translate between academic speech and normal, I like her magic door, I like her domesticity, I like her cats. I like the entire Enchanted Forest surrounding her, and how capricious it is. And no matter how practical and sensible she is, there must be a reason she decided to live somewhere that definitely isn't sensible. I like her relationships with all the other nominated characters, individually and together.
What I like about the Enchanted Forest as a series is the practical attitude everyone has to the weird things going on around them (though I also love Telemain's academicness). I like the different kinds of magic, how some of them need rituals and some don't, how they all seem to work despite being very different in other ways. I like all the hints and references to other stories that get drawn in, even if they're not expanded on. And I really like fairy tale retellings as a genre period.
If you want to benignly internet-stalk me to get an idea of my interests, Tumblr and AO3 (both linked in the sidebar) are probably a better idea than DW. However, my previous Yuletide-related posts are tagged here.
This year I requested The Comfortable Courtesan, Lord Peter Wimsey, A Brother's Price, Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Le Fruit Défendu, and the Enchanted Forest Chronicles.
A large and random list of things I like in general: worldbuilding, adventure, lesbians, ethical dilemmas, people being clever, twisty plots, gender, sibling or sibling-like relationships, epistolary fic, backstory, hurt/comfort, pining, physical affection, queerness, philosophy, romance, feminism, UST, found families, mythological allusions, polyamory, slash, het, femslash, hidden worlds, cities, banter, complicated plans, beautiful landscapes, angst, puns, magical realism, history, passionate platonic friendships, older women with major roles, case fic, period accuracy, gen, smut, pwp, diversity, secret identities, fairy tales... Feel free to use any of these.
Dislikes: I do not want child-focused fic. I have a major embarrassment squick, I don't like incest, and I'm not interested in graphic depictions of rape or gore or torture. However, I can be sold on most consensual kinks.
Generally I am all for alternate universes, but in these fandoms the setting is a lot of the draw for me, so perhaps not wildly alternate ones.
Fandom specific thoughts and optional details, to be taken more as suggestions and jumping-off points than requests:
The Comfortable Courtesan - Madame C- C- (Available online here.)
Any
I love everything about this story. I love the characters with their own individual strengths and weaknesses and abilities, and how so many of them are excellent at helping other people with their problems and terrible at dealing with their own. I love the casual inclusion of diversity. I also love all of the characters individually.
The only thing I specifically don't want is Eliza's last illness.
Specific prompts, all of them optional if you have a better idea:
More of Mr and Mrs F-'s backstory. Anything about Mrs F- at all, really.
Sandy's or Lord G- R-'s backstory
Things Tibby or Sophy learned from Docket, and the servants' interactions belowstairs
Docket and baby Thomasina
Eliza helping with or inspiring Clorinda's fiction.
Smut in any canon relationship
Details or snippets from Clorinda's novels or plays
Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Sylvia Marriott, Eiluned Price
I am all for Sylvia and Eiluned being sarcastic in the 20s and 30s modernist art scene. I love them and how they interact with Peter and the little we see of them with Harriet. I would love to see more of them and Harriet, or them investigating their own mystery, or just being deeply contemptful of a new movement or artist.
A Brother's Price - Wen Spencer
Any
I'm more interested in worldbuilding than any individual character here, but please don't think I wouldn't also like the story about [canon character] that you've been dreaming of writing. That would be great! The following is just areas you could focus on.
(Except, I don't want to read about Keifer's abuse of the princesses, please.)
Worldbuilding, though. Especially queer worldbuilding. What's it like being gay when you might only meet two or three other men in your life? What happens to a nice respectable boy in a nice respectable marriage who can't perform sexually? Are there boys who have run away and cross-dressed like Shakespearean heroines? (If you want a specific prompt, THIS.) Here, the social difficulties for gay men specifically fascinate me.
I find this book interesting because I think in some ways Spencer still fails to carry through her premise, and falls into our-world stereotypes (for example, Jerin's sisters being more interested in clothes than he is). So feel free to go beyond what's onscreen.
Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms - Mercedes Lackey
Any
Again, what I'm interested in for this is not specifically the characters but the setting and worldbuilding. (Edited to clarify: but please don't think I wouldn't also like the story about [canon character] that you've been dreaming of writing. That would be great! The following is just areas you could focus on.)
I want to know more about stories and the Tradition and especially what Traditional paths exist for queer people and what happens to people who fall into/fight them. There are roles for queer people, or at least heavily coded queer people, in fairy tales, though a lot of them are tragic, and there are also stories of close friendship that are about half an inch away from being queer. What does that look like from the inside if you know about the Tradition? What does it look like if you don't? What does it look like to a Godmother on the outside?
Le Fruit Défendu - Auguste Toulmouche (Available online here.)
Any
Basically what I was thinking when I nominated this was, "Five minutes before the lesbian orgy." Alternatively, they could be researching for their slash fics.
It's the cheerful, collegial attitude toward getting past society's limits on what they're supposed to be accessing that's the draw for me, and that feels very relevant to fandom - the two girls leaning against each other and reading, the smirking girl in the back (with the key to the book cupboards, maybe? It's hard to see. Or maybe she's going to go tell on them.), the girl on the ladder who's looking worriedly over her shoulder but isn't going to let that stop her.
And of course there's also their potential future suitors referred to in the quote from a critic in the linked tumblr post, who may get something of a surprise on the wedding night...
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia C. Wrede
Morwen
Please include any other characters you want as well, I just wanted to make sure Morwen showed up. I like her very practical attitude, I like her ability to translate between academic speech and normal, I like her magic door, I like her domesticity, I like her cats. I like the entire Enchanted Forest surrounding her, and how capricious it is. And no matter how practical and sensible she is, there must be a reason she decided to live somewhere that definitely isn't sensible. I like her relationships with all the other nominated characters, individually and together.
What I like about the Enchanted Forest as a series is the practical attitude everyone has to the weird things going on around them (though I also love Telemain's academicness). I like the different kinds of magic, how some of them need rituals and some don't, how they all seem to work despite being very different in other ways. I like all the hints and references to other stories that get drawn in, even if they're not expanded on. And I really like fairy tale retellings as a genre period.