Yuletide Letter 2021
Oct. 22nd, 2021 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chthonic_cassandraDear Yuletide Writer,
First: I must offer my most sincere apologies for leaving you with a placeholder letter when assignments went out. I know I would have felt anxious clicking the letter link to find a placeholder, and I am sorry to have given you that experience!
Thank you so very much for writing for me! This is my fifteenth year doing Yuletide, and it always the greatest joy of my holiday season. My three requests this year are each for fandoms and characters that I love so deeply that I know I will be thrilled with whatever story you choose to craft about them.
If you are the kind of writer for whom more information about a recipient's tastes and interests is helpful, you can find me at AO3 of course here. I'm also on Tumblr, where I am probably most active, as chthonic-cassandra. I've previously said: “I tend to write meditative female character-centric gen about trauma recovery, and/or fucked-up dub-con darkfic, and those are both totally things I love to read about as well, but neither of those are your style, no worries! I also really, really love romance (particularly in poly relationships), sexy D/s stuff, and world-building or plot-heavy casefic; I’m just not as good at writing any of those.” This still goes! And I want to emphasize it especially because this year I've requested Dracula, which is also the fandom I've written in the most, so please don't look at my AO3 and feel like you for some reason need to match my own head canons and interpretations! Please, no pressure on that front!
Some things I like in fic: smart, prickly, messed-up characters especially when they’re interacting with other smart, prickly messed-up characters; complicated or tense relationship negotiation; power dynamics (sexual or not, and either set and formalized or in constant flux); poly relationships; moments of hope/resilience within suffering; canon divergence (‘what if?’ AUs), darkfic/horror, D/s and related kink (especially bondage, humiliation, pain - either healthy and negotiated kink or also fucked-up dub or non-con stuff); moral ambiguity, or characters dealing with situations where there are no good choices; depictions of trauma recovery or otherwise putting one’s life together after devastation; characters who are smart and competent and passionate about things; allusion, experimention, meta-fictional stuff, playfulness with form and language; historical details and world-building; pastiche; things in general being complicated and messy and nuanced
Some things I’d prefer not to read about: dub-con which involves ‘they secretly wanted it’ or ‘they didn’t want it at first but then learned they actually did’ tropes (other kinds of dub- or non-con are fine); any kind of "it was all in their head" mental illness AU; traumatic events treated as jokes or insignificant; setting-changing AUs; crossovers (with the exception of Penny Dreadful, which is itself a crossover, and for which more gothic crossovers would be fine and welcome); slapstick humor; PWP (any level of explicit content is fine, but I’m in it mostly for the characters); heavy focus on bodily fluids other than blood; focus on animal harm, or meat preparation; focus on pregnancy or being a parent of young children; sexual content with anyone younger than late adolescence; dogs; explicit discussion of disordered eating
And prompts!
Penny Dreadful (tv)
Character: Vanessa Ives
Prompt:
Vanessa is one of my favorite characters in anything ever ever ever and I would be delighted by anything that focuses on her and her inner life. I would be thrilled to receive a story that focused in on Vanessa in many different directions; canon divergence AUs would be especially welcome for this story.
If you would like to bring in additional characters, I would love to hear more about Vanessa's relationships with Hecate Poole, Lucifer, Dracula, Evelyn Poole, or John Clare. Vanessa/Hecate or Lucifer/Vanessa/Dracula would both be exciting. I also find it a terrible shame that Vanessa and Brona-Lily never get to interact in canon, and would be fascinated to know how they would react to each other. But feel free to bring in whichever nominated or un-nominated characters you like!
I am really interested in Vanessa's relationship with her own faith, and with her own magical abilities. I would love a story that explored one (or more) of the stages in her evolving relationship with these things, and perhaps how it comes out in relation to the other characters. An AU where Vanessa makes different choices at earlier points in her story (joining Lucifer or Dracula when they come to her in the asylum? joining up with Evelyn and/or Hecate? not giving into Dracula in season three?) would fascinate me.
My favorite ships for this show are Vanessa/Hecate and Lucifer/Vanessa/Dracula; Vanessa/Mina is also excellent. I like the young men of the show (Ethan, Dorian, Victor) but would prefer a story that isn't altogether focused on them.
This is implied in my DNWs above, but I want to especially emphasize for this fandom that, while I love the show's nuanced exploration of mental illness coexisting with the supernatural, I would really not like a story that took a "it's all in her ahead" (ala Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Normal Again") approach to Vanessa's experiences.
Some things I love in canon: straight-up unapologetically going for the gothic atmosphere and narrative and world; colonialism and patriarchy as horror stories in themselves; spiders!; everything about Vanessa; people can make bad choices and still be worthy of compassion; clever and intricate allusion in the crossovering; polymorphous perversity; believing implausible trauma narratives as essential to defeat evil; Lily’s anti-libertine club; pretty dresses
Additional optional note about this fandom: So, I’m a pretty long-term Dracula fan, that’s probably my primary fandom over the years. Penny Dreadful’s engagement with its Dracula characters and material was…inconsistent, and sometimes weird. I personally loved pretty much all the S3 stuff (Florence Seward and her secretary Renfield!), but was really frustrated by the S1 material (her name is Mina but she’s acting more like Lucy and the narrative gives her nothing to do?). If you, my writer, are interested in the Dracula crossover element and want to more extensively explore and reconcile that, I would be up for it, but there’s no pressure on that front whatsoever.
The Masquerade Series - Seth Dickinson
Character: Iscend Comprine
Prompt:
This is a request from last year, at which point my mind had been totally taken over by The Tyrant Baru Cormorant. I have a little more distance from that first reading experience now, but I am still over come with it. And I still want more of Iscend. I adore her, and the way that her story shows how humanity and agency can still exist even within the context of such deeply insidious and devastatingly global conditioning. The steps that she takes to regain her agency move me and fill me with so much excitement (using her own trigger word on herself! using her own trigger word on herself!). I loved the scene with Baru in which she describes the pleasure she felt during her training as an act of resistance, and the way she explains her reasoning behind sexually engaging with Baru.
I would love a story focused on Iscend in any way, whatever part of her life you would like to explore. Something that takes us beyond the end of Tyrant and shows Iscend continuing her journey to find her autonomy would be amazing, as would a story that shows us her life before her appearance in the series. I would be especially interested in some exploration of Iscend's relationship with Torrinde, which we can only assume from hints about how Torrinde feels about and engages with the Clarified. If you are interested in getting inside Iscend's mind and showing us what her internal experience looks like, I would be over the moon.
I don't particularly ship Iscend with anyone, but wouldn't say no to some complexly power dynamic-y stuff between her and Baru; if you have another ship for her I'd also be willing to be sold on it! I am happy to see any characters, nominated or not, included. Also feel free to take your story as dark as you want to with some of the more thorny parts of canon, or the hints we get about how horrific the training the Clarified receive is.
Note re DNWs for this fandom: for this prompt I would be okay with a story that deals with the sexually abusive implications of the Masquerade's policies in childhood education/the training of the Clarified, but I would want this content to be treated as traumatic and not titillating.
Some things I love in canon: the danger of becoming the evil you are trying to fight; Trim and compassion and the resistance which is being a human connected to other humans; twists and double-crossing to the end and back; decolonization in all its messy nuances; showing thought and revelation; characters who are deeply lovable and deeply awful; loving depictions of queerness, nonbinary identity, and disability.
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Characters: Mina, Jonathan, Dracula
Prompt:
Okay. So this is my dear primary fandom, the fandom of my heart, the one I have been writing and reading in for well over 15 years. I often don't request it for Yuletide because I try to spread my affection more broadly, but this year I am going to be honest with myself: I really want more Dracula fic in the world and if you, dear author, want to write it for me I would be so very thrilled.
In particular, I would love a story that in some ways puts Mina, Jonathan, and Dracula in a triangle with each other. Not necessarily in a shippy/OT3 way (though that's great if you want to go there!), but something playing with some of the possible relational variants between them. I have a voracious curiosity about all the ways this could go! Does Mina try to rescue Jonathan from Dracula's castle? Are Mina and Jonathan keep Dracula captive, or is Dracula keeping Mina and Jonathan captive? Do they have to work together to deal with some other adversary? Something else I'm not thinking of right now? I am so excited for whatever you come up with, especially if you can keep Dracula at least somewhat villainous throughout it.
A couple notes re DNWs for this fandom: I love many of the characters in this book, and there are so many adaptations which vilify them, and this makes me sad. I am totally into seeing Jonathan and Mina represented in complex and morally nuanced ways, but I would prefer a story that doesn't make one of them into the villain, especially in order to clear the way for the other to be paired with Dracula. (I also feel this way about Dracula's brides, who I didn't request but who I feel very tenderly towards as characters, if they do show up in your story.) Also I would prefer no extensive focus on the asylum/institutionalization element of the novel.
Some things I love in canon: epistolarity!!!; the love and care the characters have towards each other; everyone is poly (both the heroes and the villains); everyone is a nerd (both the heroes and the villains); Dracula's weird syntax; Mina and her train tables and her shorthand; Jonathan's oath to Mina versus his private willingness to be a vampire with her so she doesn't have to go into that dark land alone; the mental connection between Dracula and Mina and her using it against him; the tense intensity of the castle scenes; buried Shakespeare echoes everywhere; everyone is traumatized
First: I must offer my most sincere apologies for leaving you with a placeholder letter when assignments went out. I know I would have felt anxious clicking the letter link to find a placeholder, and I am sorry to have given you that experience!
Thank you so very much for writing for me! This is my fifteenth year doing Yuletide, and it always the greatest joy of my holiday season. My three requests this year are each for fandoms and characters that I love so deeply that I know I will be thrilled with whatever story you choose to craft about them.
If you are the kind of writer for whom more information about a recipient's tastes and interests is helpful, you can find me at AO3 of course here. I'm also on Tumblr, where I am probably most active, as chthonic-cassandra. I've previously said: “I tend to write meditative female character-centric gen about trauma recovery, and/or fucked-up dub-con darkfic, and those are both totally things I love to read about as well, but neither of those are your style, no worries! I also really, really love romance (particularly in poly relationships), sexy D/s stuff, and world-building or plot-heavy casefic; I’m just not as good at writing any of those.” This still goes! And I want to emphasize it especially because this year I've requested Dracula, which is also the fandom I've written in the most, so please don't look at my AO3 and feel like you for some reason need to match my own head canons and interpretations! Please, no pressure on that front!
Some things I like in fic: smart, prickly, messed-up characters especially when they’re interacting with other smart, prickly messed-up characters; complicated or tense relationship negotiation; power dynamics (sexual or not, and either set and formalized or in constant flux); poly relationships; moments of hope/resilience within suffering; canon divergence (‘what if?’ AUs), darkfic/horror, D/s and related kink (especially bondage, humiliation, pain - either healthy and negotiated kink or also fucked-up dub or non-con stuff); moral ambiguity, or characters dealing with situations where there are no good choices; depictions of trauma recovery or otherwise putting one’s life together after devastation; characters who are smart and competent and passionate about things; allusion, experimention, meta-fictional stuff, playfulness with form and language; historical details and world-building; pastiche; things in general being complicated and messy and nuanced
Some things I’d prefer not to read about: dub-con which involves ‘they secretly wanted it’ or ‘they didn’t want it at first but then learned they actually did’ tropes (other kinds of dub- or non-con are fine); any kind of "it was all in their head" mental illness AU; traumatic events treated as jokes or insignificant; setting-changing AUs; crossovers (with the exception of Penny Dreadful, which is itself a crossover, and for which more gothic crossovers would be fine and welcome); slapstick humor; PWP (any level of explicit content is fine, but I’m in it mostly for the characters); heavy focus on bodily fluids other than blood; focus on animal harm, or meat preparation; focus on pregnancy or being a parent of young children; sexual content with anyone younger than late adolescence; dogs; explicit discussion of disordered eating
And prompts!
Penny Dreadful (tv)
Character: Vanessa Ives
Prompt:
Vanessa is one of my favorite characters in anything ever ever ever and I would be delighted by anything that focuses on her and her inner life. I would be thrilled to receive a story that focused in on Vanessa in many different directions; canon divergence AUs would be especially welcome for this story.
If you would like to bring in additional characters, I would love to hear more about Vanessa's relationships with Hecate Poole, Lucifer, Dracula, Evelyn Poole, or John Clare. Vanessa/Hecate or Lucifer/Vanessa/Dracula would both be exciting. I also find it a terrible shame that Vanessa and Brona-Lily never get to interact in canon, and would be fascinated to know how they would react to each other. But feel free to bring in whichever nominated or un-nominated characters you like!
I am really interested in Vanessa's relationship with her own faith, and with her own magical abilities. I would love a story that explored one (or more) of the stages in her evolving relationship with these things, and perhaps how it comes out in relation to the other characters. An AU where Vanessa makes different choices at earlier points in her story (joining Lucifer or Dracula when they come to her in the asylum? joining up with Evelyn and/or Hecate? not giving into Dracula in season three?) would fascinate me.
My favorite ships for this show are Vanessa/Hecate and Lucifer/Vanessa/Dracula; Vanessa/Mina is also excellent. I like the young men of the show (Ethan, Dorian, Victor) but would prefer a story that isn't altogether focused on them.
This is implied in my DNWs above, but I want to especially emphasize for this fandom that, while I love the show's nuanced exploration of mental illness coexisting with the supernatural, I would really not like a story that took a "it's all in her ahead" (ala Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Normal Again") approach to Vanessa's experiences.
Some things I love in canon: straight-up unapologetically going for the gothic atmosphere and narrative and world; colonialism and patriarchy as horror stories in themselves; spiders!; everything about Vanessa; people can make bad choices and still be worthy of compassion; clever and intricate allusion in the crossovering; polymorphous perversity; believing implausible trauma narratives as essential to defeat evil; Lily’s anti-libertine club; pretty dresses
Additional optional note about this fandom: So, I’m a pretty long-term Dracula fan, that’s probably my primary fandom over the years. Penny Dreadful’s engagement with its Dracula characters and material was…inconsistent, and sometimes weird. I personally loved pretty much all the S3 stuff (Florence Seward and her secretary Renfield!), but was really frustrated by the S1 material (her name is Mina but she’s acting more like Lucy and the narrative gives her nothing to do?). If you, my writer, are interested in the Dracula crossover element and want to more extensively explore and reconcile that, I would be up for it, but there’s no pressure on that front whatsoever.
The Masquerade Series - Seth Dickinson
Character: Iscend Comprine
Prompt:
This is a request from last year, at which point my mind had been totally taken over by The Tyrant Baru Cormorant. I have a little more distance from that first reading experience now, but I am still over come with it. And I still want more of Iscend. I adore her, and the way that her story shows how humanity and agency can still exist even within the context of such deeply insidious and devastatingly global conditioning. The steps that she takes to regain her agency move me and fill me with so much excitement (using her own trigger word on herself! using her own trigger word on herself!). I loved the scene with Baru in which she describes the pleasure she felt during her training as an act of resistance, and the way she explains her reasoning behind sexually engaging with Baru.
I would love a story focused on Iscend in any way, whatever part of her life you would like to explore. Something that takes us beyond the end of Tyrant and shows Iscend continuing her journey to find her autonomy would be amazing, as would a story that shows us her life before her appearance in the series. I would be especially interested in some exploration of Iscend's relationship with Torrinde, which we can only assume from hints about how Torrinde feels about and engages with the Clarified. If you are interested in getting inside Iscend's mind and showing us what her internal experience looks like, I would be over the moon.
I don't particularly ship Iscend with anyone, but wouldn't say no to some complexly power dynamic-y stuff between her and Baru; if you have another ship for her I'd also be willing to be sold on it! I am happy to see any characters, nominated or not, included. Also feel free to take your story as dark as you want to with some of the more thorny parts of canon, or the hints we get about how horrific the training the Clarified receive is.
Note re DNWs for this fandom: for this prompt I would be okay with a story that deals with the sexually abusive implications of the Masquerade's policies in childhood education/the training of the Clarified, but I would want this content to be treated as traumatic and not titillating.
Some things I love in canon: the danger of becoming the evil you are trying to fight; Trim and compassion and the resistance which is being a human connected to other humans; twists and double-crossing to the end and back; decolonization in all its messy nuances; showing thought and revelation; characters who are deeply lovable and deeply awful; loving depictions of queerness, nonbinary identity, and disability.
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Characters: Mina, Jonathan, Dracula
Prompt:
Okay. So this is my dear primary fandom, the fandom of my heart, the one I have been writing and reading in for well over 15 years. I often don't request it for Yuletide because I try to spread my affection more broadly, but this year I am going to be honest with myself: I really want more Dracula fic in the world and if you, dear author, want to write it for me I would be so very thrilled.
In particular, I would love a story that in some ways puts Mina, Jonathan, and Dracula in a triangle with each other. Not necessarily in a shippy/OT3 way (though that's great if you want to go there!), but something playing with some of the possible relational variants between them. I have a voracious curiosity about all the ways this could go! Does Mina try to rescue Jonathan from Dracula's castle? Are Mina and Jonathan keep Dracula captive, or is Dracula keeping Mina and Jonathan captive? Do they have to work together to deal with some other adversary? Something else I'm not thinking of right now? I am so excited for whatever you come up with, especially if you can keep Dracula at least somewhat villainous throughout it.
A couple notes re DNWs for this fandom: I love many of the characters in this book, and there are so many adaptations which vilify them, and this makes me sad. I am totally into seeing Jonathan and Mina represented in complex and morally nuanced ways, but I would prefer a story that doesn't make one of them into the villain, especially in order to clear the way for the other to be paired with Dracula. (I also feel this way about Dracula's brides, who I didn't request but who I feel very tenderly towards as characters, if they do show up in your story.) Also I would prefer no extensive focus on the asylum/institutionalization element of the novel.
Some things I love in canon: epistolarity!!!; the love and care the characters have towards each other; everyone is poly (both the heroes and the villains); everyone is a nerd (both the heroes and the villains); Dracula's weird syntax; Mina and her train tables and her shorthand; Jonathan's oath to Mina versus his private willingness to be a vampire with her so she doesn't have to go into that dark land alone; the mental connection between Dracula and Mina and her using it against him; the tense intensity of the castle scenes; buried Shakespeare echoes everywhere; everyone is traumatized
