Dear Santa...
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Nov. 12th, 2008 | 02:02 pm
mood: gleeful
music: The Tea Party - Fire In The Head
First of all, HOORAY. I got a Yuletide request that I am genuinely enthused about writing - that makes me a very happy fangirl. Thankyou, thankyou, blessed recipient. I hope I can do your request justice.
(As I said in my main journal, I still reserve the right in mid-December to curse my recipient's name, every single one of her fandoms, the creator of the fandom I'm writing, people who invented fandom, people who invented writing, and anything else that gets in my way. But that's no-one's fault but my own.)
Second of all...
Dear Yuletide Writer,
First of all, I want to say thankyou very much for offering to write something for me. The fandoms I requested are a mixture of old and new, and I know all of them have very talented people writing in them - and I'm pretty sure I'm going to love whatever you give me. So, thankyou!
I realise this journal is all but empty, and it might not be much help for you, so I'd like to point you at my main LJ over at![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
ladyjestyr if you want to get some idea about the stuff that makes me babble incoherently.
But this wouldn't be a Dear Yuletide Writer letter without some specifics, so here goes!
General thoughts:
Things I Love: banter, snark, UST, UST that gets resolved, first times, stoic pining, stoic pining that gets resolved, partnerships of equals, partners who know each other well enough not to need words, shenanigans and capers, snappy dialogue, lyrical prose, humour, happy endings, bittersweet endings, het, gen, slash (including femslash), love, loyalty, lust, hot sex, a total absence of hot sex, crack, AUs, crossovers, bodyswaps, genderfuck, anything wildly improbably that works anyway.
I have a massive kink for competence; people being assured and good at things is just hot. (I also have a massive kink for men in eyeliner - not girly teeny boys, but actual men. Examples: Michael Vartan, Jeffrey Donovan, Callum Keith Rennie, Clive Owen, and Johnny Depp. Not that I am saying you should force everyone into eyeliner. Only if, y'know, you think it suits them.)
Things On Which I Am Generally Not Quite So Keen: unrelenting misery, heavy kink, character bashing, het-hate, incest (although in some fandoms I buy it), men written like thirteen year old girls, humiliation, the fish-out-of-water trope. And I have a major embarrassment squick.
* I'm not really into slash-for-slash's sake. While I often get OTPish about some fandoms, those OTPs are just as likely to be het as slash pairings. But I'm totally not anti-slash - it's just about the characters for me, and who they have individual chemistry with.
* I love gen. Hot sex is great, of course, but if you're a bit iffy about the pairings I prefer, I really don't mind a gen piece - preferably something with a bit of plot, not just a character study. Gen stories are what our fandoms are often based on, after all, and I love the characters for much more than just having sex with each other in our minds.
* It's Yuletide, which I kind of feel is not entirely the time for really miserable angst or grinding despair - if it's going to be dark, give me some leavening touches of humour or hope, please! That said, I don't require all sweetness-and-light la la happy fun times fic either. I'm an adult, and adult conflicts and dilemmas are interesting. :) (However, if you are inspired for sweet fluff, far be it from me to say no thanks!)
* I have a huge embarrassment/humiliation squick. It makes me sad in my pants.
Fandom thoughts:
1: Dorothy L Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey series
My prompt: I'd prefer gen or het, with Peter, Harriet or both - something plotty is lovely, but I really don't mind, because let's face it - we all love Wimsey stories for the banter anyway. Femslash is fine, but I'd prefer no Peter/Parker or Peter/other slash.
I have loved the Sayers books since I started reading them at age 11ish. (Man, you can imagine how much of them went over my head at that age, right?) My favourites, for reference, are Murder Must Advertise (because I just love the details of working for Pym's, mostly) and the absolutely incomparable Gaudy Night. I am an enthusiastic Peter/Harriet shipper, and while I can quite believe that both of them had dalliances with others even after meeting each other, I tend to feel that after the events of Gaudy Night they're about as solid a partnership as you can get.
So I'd really rather not see Peter or Harriet paired with anyone else if it's post-Gaudy Night, but pre-Gaudy Night is another story. I'd prefer not to read Peter/Parker or Peter/Bunter, but Peter/someone else is fine, as is Harriet/Anyone. Alternatively, something gen would also be much-loved, as would something with Peter and Harriet during his courtship of her. The things I really love about the Wimsey books are the wit, the humour, the literary references, the keen eye for puncturing social posturing, the perfect portraits of England in the 1920s and 1930s.
2: Chuck
My prompt: When it comes to pairings I'm a big fan of Chuck/Casey, but I'm just as happy with some gen shenanigans. Stories at or around the Buy More always make me happy, too!
I love so many things about Chuck. I love Chuck's family life - Chuck and Ellie, and the awesomeness of Captain Awesome. I love the Buy More, and the way Chuck is - despite his feelings of failure - an authority figure there even when he's trying not to be. I love the Chuck/Sarah/Casey team dynamic. I love the sense of humour about the show, I love awesome hot spies, I love the tertiary characters.
I do not love the way Chuck is usually made to look like a putz for the sake of comedy (because come on, he's been at this for how long now? he's a smart and adaptable guy; I refuse to believe he still thinks entirely like a civilian) but I recognise that's mostly due to the nature of episodic TV comedy. I just prefer my fic-Chuck a little more competent, a little more able to learn from what's happened so far.
Pairing-wise, I vastly prefer Chuck/Casey to Chuck/Sarah, mostly because it's just a more interesting character dynamic, but if you're steadfastly on the Chuck/Sarah ship I'll still happily read it. Gen is also quite alright by me. I'd love to see a story with a bit of plot, whether it's 'a day in the life of a Buy More' or spy capers and shenanigans. Bonus points for the appearance of tertiary characters, but I will be quite happy with pretty much anything. (Except, um, no Chuck/Ellie. Please. :))
3: Guy Gavriel Kay - A Song for Arbonne
My prompt: I'd love something centred around the jongleurs and whole Court of Love culture, but any glimpse into Arbonne would be lovely.
I love all of GGK's books - he's my favourite author - and A Song For Arbonne was my favourite as a teenager. Part of the reason I picked it for Yuletide is because it's easier to get into than the Fionavar Tapestry or the Sarantine Mosaic, if you want to learn a new fandom fast, and it's less heartbreaking than Tigana or The Lions of Al-Rassan. (I still cannot read Tigana without crying for about 75% of the book.) I love the lyrical prose and the alternate-history-ness of Kay's books, the way the themes and events are so familiar without ever being the same as Earth.
The other reason I picked it is because I think there's a lot of the social setting that the book touches on as a backdrop but never explores, and that's what makes Arbonne special - Ariane's Court of Love, and the whole social system of courtly love, the joglars and troubadours, the power of women in Arbonne's society - all the things that make Arbonne so different from Gorhaut and even Portezza and her other neighbours.
So, I'd love to see something - anything - in Arbonne, shaping more pictures of it. I'm a big fan of Lisseut/Blaise, which the epilogue implies, but I am pretty much greedy for anything in this fandom, be it het, slash or gen.
Thankyou very much!
Much Love,
Eleanor
(As I said in my main journal, I still reserve the right in mid-December to curse my recipient's name, every single one of her fandoms, the creator of the fandom I'm writing, people who invented fandom, people who invented writing, and anything else that gets in my way. But that's no-one's fault but my own.)
Second of all...
Dear Yuletide Writer,
First of all, I want to say thankyou very much for offering to write something for me. The fandoms I requested are a mixture of old and new, and I know all of them have very talented people writing in them - and I'm pretty sure I'm going to love whatever you give me. So, thankyou!
I realise this journal is all but empty, and it might not be much help for you, so I'd like to point you at my main LJ over at
ladyjestyr if you want to get some idea about the stuff that makes me babble incoherently.But this wouldn't be a Dear Yuletide Writer letter without some specifics, so here goes!
General thoughts:
Things I Love: banter, snark, UST, UST that gets resolved, first times, stoic pining, stoic pining that gets resolved, partnerships of equals, partners who know each other well enough not to need words, shenanigans and capers, snappy dialogue, lyrical prose, humour, happy endings, bittersweet endings, het, gen, slash (including femslash), love, loyalty, lust, hot sex, a total absence of hot sex, crack, AUs, crossovers, bodyswaps, genderfuck, anything wildly improbably that works anyway.
I have a massive kink for competence; people being assured and good at things is just hot. (I also have a massive kink for men in eyeliner - not girly teeny boys, but actual men. Examples: Michael Vartan, Jeffrey Donovan, Callum Keith Rennie, Clive Owen, and Johnny Depp. Not that I am saying you should force everyone into eyeliner. Only if, y'know, you think it suits them.)
Things On Which I Am Generally Not Quite So Keen: unrelenting misery, heavy kink, character bashing, het-hate, incest (although in some fandoms I buy it), men written like thirteen year old girls, humiliation, the fish-out-of-water trope. And I have a major embarrassment squick.
* I'm not really into slash-for-slash's sake. While I often get OTPish about some fandoms, those OTPs are just as likely to be het as slash pairings. But I'm totally not anti-slash - it's just about the characters for me, and who they have individual chemistry with.
* I love gen. Hot sex is great, of course, but if you're a bit iffy about the pairings I prefer, I really don't mind a gen piece - preferably something with a bit of plot, not just a character study. Gen stories are what our fandoms are often based on, after all, and I love the characters for much more than just having sex with each other in our minds.
* It's Yuletide, which I kind of feel is not entirely the time for really miserable angst or grinding despair - if it's going to be dark, give me some leavening touches of humour or hope, please! That said, I don't require all sweetness-and-light la la happy fun times fic either. I'm an adult, and adult conflicts and dilemmas are interesting. :) (However, if you are inspired for sweet fluff, far be it from me to say no thanks!)
* I have a huge embarrassment/humiliation squick. It makes me sad in my pants.
Fandom thoughts:
1: Dorothy L Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey series
My prompt: I'd prefer gen or het, with Peter, Harriet or both - something plotty is lovely, but I really don't mind, because let's face it - we all love Wimsey stories for the banter anyway. Femslash is fine, but I'd prefer no Peter/Parker or Peter/other slash.
I have loved the Sayers books since I started reading them at age 11ish. (Man, you can imagine how much of them went over my head at that age, right?) My favourites, for reference, are Murder Must Advertise (because I just love the details of working for Pym's, mostly) and the absolutely incomparable Gaudy Night. I am an enthusiastic Peter/Harriet shipper, and while I can quite believe that both of them had dalliances with others even after meeting each other, I tend to feel that after the events of Gaudy Night they're about as solid a partnership as you can get.
So I'd really rather not see Peter or Harriet paired with anyone else if it's post-Gaudy Night, but pre-Gaudy Night is another story. I'd prefer not to read Peter/Parker or Peter/Bunter, but Peter/someone else is fine, as is Harriet/Anyone. Alternatively, something gen would also be much-loved, as would something with Peter and Harriet during his courtship of her. The things I really love about the Wimsey books are the wit, the humour, the literary references, the keen eye for puncturing social posturing, the perfect portraits of England in the 1920s and 1930s.
2: Chuck
My prompt: When it comes to pairings I'm a big fan of Chuck/Casey, but I'm just as happy with some gen shenanigans. Stories at or around the Buy More always make me happy, too!
I love so many things about Chuck. I love Chuck's family life - Chuck and Ellie, and the awesomeness of Captain Awesome. I love the Buy More, and the way Chuck is - despite his feelings of failure - an authority figure there even when he's trying not to be. I love the Chuck/Sarah/Casey team dynamic. I love the sense of humour about the show, I love awesome hot spies, I love the tertiary characters.
I do not love the way Chuck is usually made to look like a putz for the sake of comedy (because come on, he's been at this for how long now? he's a smart and adaptable guy; I refuse to believe he still thinks entirely like a civilian) but I recognise that's mostly due to the nature of episodic TV comedy. I just prefer my fic-Chuck a little more competent, a little more able to learn from what's happened so far.
Pairing-wise, I vastly prefer Chuck/Casey to Chuck/Sarah, mostly because it's just a more interesting character dynamic, but if you're steadfastly on the Chuck/Sarah ship I'll still happily read it. Gen is also quite alright by me. I'd love to see a story with a bit of plot, whether it's 'a day in the life of a Buy More' or spy capers and shenanigans. Bonus points for the appearance of tertiary characters, but I will be quite happy with pretty much anything. (Except, um, no Chuck/Ellie. Please. :))
3: Guy Gavriel Kay - A Song for Arbonne
My prompt: I'd love something centred around the jongleurs and whole Court of Love culture, but any glimpse into Arbonne would be lovely.
I love all of GGK's books - he's my favourite author - and A Song For Arbonne was my favourite as a teenager. Part of the reason I picked it for Yuletide is because it's easier to get into than the Fionavar Tapestry or the Sarantine Mosaic, if you want to learn a new fandom fast, and it's less heartbreaking than Tigana or The Lions of Al-Rassan. (I still cannot read Tigana without crying for about 75% of the book.) I love the lyrical prose and the alternate-history-ness of Kay's books, the way the themes and events are so familiar without ever being the same as Earth.
The other reason I picked it is because I think there's a lot of the social setting that the book touches on as a backdrop but never explores, and that's what makes Arbonne special - Ariane's Court of Love, and the whole social system of courtly love, the joglars and troubadours, the power of women in Arbonne's society - all the things that make Arbonne so different from Gorhaut and even Portezza and her other neighbours.
So, I'd love to see something - anything - in Arbonne, shaping more pictures of it. I'm a big fan of Lisseut/Blaise, which the epilogue implies, but I am pretty much greedy for anything in this fandom, be it het, slash or gen.
Thankyou very much!
Much Love,
Eleanor