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Dear Yuletide Author--
Hello! You are fabulous! I can't wait to read whatever you choose to write for me! Below the cuts, I've put some general thoughts for things I like about fic, and some specific thoughts about what I like about the canons I've requested, including links to relevant stuff I've written elsewhere. But, really, whatever you want to write is totally exciting!
I'm a really political person, and I'm interested particularly in stories about resistance--how do we push back against what holds us down? What liberty do we make in the spaces left us by the constraints we experience? How do we enact freedom in the face of unfreedom? I want people fighting back, in whatever ways are possible, and fighting back with style. And, because we have greater control over our stories than our lives, I want them to win.
In general, I'm fine with smutty stuff (that is a gross understatement). However, it's not necessary (or most compelling) for me in any of these canons, and for some of them I actively don't want it (Dollhouse: please, please, please don't write me Dollhouse porn). Where there is sexy stuff, I want it to derive organically from a greater story, whether it's canon or the story the fic is telling. I don't really like PWPs, except under some very limited circumstances that I don't think any of these fandoms have. I am fine with kink--I like it, actually--but, again, I really need to understand why the kink's there, what work it does for these people in this place. (My personal kinkometer hovers at the light end of the spectrum--a little tying up, a little slapping around, a little remember-who-you-belong-to, that sort of thing.)
I do not like major character death. I am at a point in my life where the death of small children sets me off like crazy, so, please, no onscreen dead babies. Stories about violence (including sexual/sexualized or hate-crime violence) are fine, so long as it's earned within the greater narrative, and treated with a modicum of realism and no excessive gratuitousness. My only triggers are around medical situations, and they aren't easily provoked by text.
Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
(characters: Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian)
My primary canon is the first three books. I use the HHGG books to read myself to sleep every night, so I have a very aural impression of the language; a taste of that would be amazing. I don't truly ship anything here, so gen about any of the characters, or any sort of rollicking adventure, or world-building, or whatever is awesomesauce. I particularly love how intensely smart and capable Trillian is, so something about Trillian rocking would be great. I would love a fic about her emotional state during Life, the Universe, and Everything - how does she feel upon ditching Zaphod? Why does she decide, at the end of the book, to go back to him? Does the experience with Haktar change her?
PS: If Marvin could make a cameo, I would squee like a squeeing thing.
Dollhouse
(characters: Sierra, Echo, Topher)
I love Dollhouse because it's a story about the nature of the self--particularly whether there is a self--while also being a story about resistance. I like it because it is so morally compromised at all times; the 'innocent victims' have different histories, different amounts of autonomy, and different perspectives, when they wake up, on their experiences, while the 'perpetrators' are frequently morally ambiguous, and fighting to figure out whether they can, in fact, do right. These are all tropes I fucking love. (My Dollhouse tag has everything I've written about the show, if you want to see what I've said.)
In terms of things I'd like: I like the interplay between Caroline and Echo, as Echo develops; I'm interested in Caroline and Priya, before their days as Dolls; I'm interested in the ten year gap, particularly for Priya; I'm interested in seeing what love feels like for Sierra and Victor; and anything about Topher would be great, particularly something that gestures to his moral ambivalence. (I would also want, if there's any mention of sex in the Sierra or Echo stories, to have the problems with consent inherent in the structure of the plot taken seriously.)
Revenge (TV)
(characters: Amanda Clark/Emily Thorne, Ashley Davenport, Victoria Grayson, Nolan Ross)
REVENNNNNNNGE!!!!!!!! This is how I pronounce the show's name, and this is basically how I think of it: over the top, absurd, and fabulous. I've recently moved out of New York City, and I have spent some time in my life with the absurdly rich of the NYC area, so the whole environment strikes me as exactly as over-the-top and impossible as the 1%'s lives really are. Pretty much, all my serious, thinky thoughts about resistance and stuff? Forget them. I want the soap opera drama here.
The one real bunny I have to offer up is that I'm curious about the Amanda/Ashley friendship. How did they come to be friends? How instrumental is Amanda's use of Ashley? How much does Ashely know/suspect about Amanda? Er, and that slash there: I could see it. If you want to write me some porn, I won't stop you.
As for Victoria, I would love anything that captures the tension between her Queen Bitch status and her actual, wavering moral compass. And anything with Nolan being fabulous and incomprehensible.
Critical Theory RPF
(Characters: C. Wright Mills, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak)
I wrote a meta about how much I want fic about philosophers a while back, here. Also, I wrote a story that I would have put in this fandom last year; it's called Many Forms of Resistance, and it's about Mills and Foucault fighting zombies using anti-aircraft weapons. Just to give you an idea where I'm coming from.
Ideally, I'd like something in this vein for Mills and/or Spivak: something totally cracked out happens, and they respond to it in line with how their theory expects they would respond. Details from their actual biographies are excellent. You're welcome to steal the worldbuilding from Many Forms of Resistance if you like. (Spivak stayed behind to defend Columbia from the zombie hoardes? She and Joseph Massad throwing furniture out of the library windows onto zombies, burning the entire collected works of Bernard Lewis? The options are endless.) But it doesn't have to be zombies: vampires? Dinosaurs? Barista AU? GRAD STUDENT AU?
You are welcome to people your fic with any major theoretical figure from the mid-twentieth-century on. I don't even care if you don't use Mills or Spivak (I wasn't smart enough to nominate this fandom, so didn't add characters). So, anybody. Just theorist crack, that's what I want.
Hello! You are fabulous! I can't wait to read whatever you choose to write for me! Below the cuts, I've put some general thoughts for things I like about fic, and some specific thoughts about what I like about the canons I've requested, including links to relevant stuff I've written elsewhere. But, really, whatever you want to write is totally exciting!
I'm a really political person, and I'm interested particularly in stories about resistance--how do we push back against what holds us down? What liberty do we make in the spaces left us by the constraints we experience? How do we enact freedom in the face of unfreedom? I want people fighting back, in whatever ways are possible, and fighting back with style. And, because we have greater control over our stories than our lives, I want them to win.
In general, I'm fine with smutty stuff (that is a gross understatement). However, it's not necessary (or most compelling) for me in any of these canons, and for some of them I actively don't want it (Dollhouse: please, please, please don't write me Dollhouse porn). Where there is sexy stuff, I want it to derive organically from a greater story, whether it's canon or the story the fic is telling. I don't really like PWPs, except under some very limited circumstances that I don't think any of these fandoms have. I am fine with kink--I like it, actually--but, again, I really need to understand why the kink's there, what work it does for these people in this place. (My personal kinkometer hovers at the light end of the spectrum--a little tying up, a little slapping around, a little remember-who-you-belong-to, that sort of thing.)
I do not like major character death. I am at a point in my life where the death of small children sets me off like crazy, so, please, no onscreen dead babies. Stories about violence (including sexual/sexualized or hate-crime violence) are fine, so long as it's earned within the greater narrative, and treated with a modicum of realism and no excessive gratuitousness. My only triggers are around medical situations, and they aren't easily provoked by text.
Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
(characters: Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian)
My primary canon is the first three books. I use the HHGG books to read myself to sleep every night, so I have a very aural impression of the language; a taste of that would be amazing. I don't truly ship anything here, so gen about any of the characters, or any sort of rollicking adventure, or world-building, or whatever is awesomesauce. I particularly love how intensely smart and capable Trillian is, so something about Trillian rocking would be great. I would love a fic about her emotional state during Life, the Universe, and Everything - how does she feel upon ditching Zaphod? Why does she decide, at the end of the book, to go back to him? Does the experience with Haktar change her?
PS: If Marvin could make a cameo, I would squee like a squeeing thing.
Dollhouse
(characters: Sierra, Echo, Topher)
I love Dollhouse because it's a story about the nature of the self--particularly whether there is a self--while also being a story about resistance. I like it because it is so morally compromised at all times; the 'innocent victims' have different histories, different amounts of autonomy, and different perspectives, when they wake up, on their experiences, while the 'perpetrators' are frequently morally ambiguous, and fighting to figure out whether they can, in fact, do right. These are all tropes I fucking love. (My Dollhouse tag has everything I've written about the show, if you want to see what I've said.)
In terms of things I'd like: I like the interplay between Caroline and Echo, as Echo develops; I'm interested in Caroline and Priya, before their days as Dolls; I'm interested in the ten year gap, particularly for Priya; I'm interested in seeing what love feels like for Sierra and Victor; and anything about Topher would be great, particularly something that gestures to his moral ambivalence. (I would also want, if there's any mention of sex in the Sierra or Echo stories, to have the problems with consent inherent in the structure of the plot taken seriously.)
Revenge (TV)
(characters: Amanda Clark/Emily Thorne, Ashley Davenport, Victoria Grayson, Nolan Ross)
REVENNNNNNNGE!!!!!!!! This is how I pronounce the show's name, and this is basically how I think of it: over the top, absurd, and fabulous. I've recently moved out of New York City, and I have spent some time in my life with the absurdly rich of the NYC area, so the whole environment strikes me as exactly as over-the-top and impossible as the 1%'s lives really are. Pretty much, all my serious, thinky thoughts about resistance and stuff? Forget them. I want the soap opera drama here.
The one real bunny I have to offer up is that I'm curious about the Amanda/Ashley friendship. How did they come to be friends? How instrumental is Amanda's use of Ashley? How much does Ashely know/suspect about Amanda? Er, and that slash there: I could see it. If you want to write me some porn, I won't stop you.
As for Victoria, I would love anything that captures the tension between her Queen Bitch status and her actual, wavering moral compass. And anything with Nolan being fabulous and incomprehensible.
Critical Theory RPF
(Characters: C. Wright Mills, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak)
I wrote a meta about how much I want fic about philosophers a while back, here. Also, I wrote a story that I would have put in this fandom last year; it's called Many Forms of Resistance, and it's about Mills and Foucault fighting zombies using anti-aircraft weapons. Just to give you an idea where I'm coming from.
Ideally, I'd like something in this vein for Mills and/or Spivak: something totally cracked out happens, and they respond to it in line with how their theory expects they would respond. Details from their actual biographies are excellent. You're welcome to steal the worldbuilding from Many Forms of Resistance if you like. (Spivak stayed behind to defend Columbia from the zombie hoardes? She and Joseph Massad throwing furniture out of the library windows onto zombies, burning the entire collected works of Bernard Lewis? The options are endless.) But it doesn't have to be zombies: vampires? Dinosaurs? Barista AU? GRAD STUDENT AU?
You are welcome to people your fic with any major theoretical figure from the mid-twentieth-century on. I don't even care if you don't use Mills or Spivak (I wasn't smart enough to nominate this fandom, so didn't add characters). So, anybody. Just theorist crack, that's what I want.