chthonic_cassandra

Dear Yuletide Writer,

I can't believe it's time for Yuletide already! This has been the craziest of years, but I am so overjoyed to still have Yuletide as a constant in all of it (this is, I think, my 14th Yuletide?), and I so deeply appreciate you writing for me. Two of my prompts this year are repeats from previous years which I am still holding out hope for; the other two are for fandoms that I have newly gotten into this year, and with which I have fallen head-over-heels in love. I would be so amazingly thrilled to read a story about any of them.

In case you want more information about my tastes: My AO3 is of course here. I'm 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.” All that still goes, so if you read one of my own fics and think that it’s seriously not your style, please don’t worry about trying to match it! I am an omnivorous and ravenous reader.

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

Now to the prompts!

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I wrote my first-ever Xena: Warrior Princess fic a few weeks ago, which is clearly a momentous occasion.

Title: Craft Twined From Craft
Fandom: Xena: Warrior Princess
Rating/Warnings: PG-13/T; dubious consent & mention of backstory non-consent, general concubine dynamics
Character/Pairing: Satrina, Xena, Borias, Xena/Satrina, Xena/Borias
Summary: Satrina is a consummate survivor. Xena is a new type of challenge.

Writing fiction has been very challenging for the past few years, really since I started doing social work full-time. I'm still untangling what's going on with that (I think it has to do with confidentiality, with keeping others' stories inside me, not mine to tell, and this subsequent protectiveness about my own), but I still want to write, and I am fighting to find my way back to it.

Which also means finding my way back to interacting actively in fandom. Xena is a slightly intimidating one to enter; it has such a long and developed history as a fandom, so different from my usual tiny fandoms around pieces of literature that have a history of adaptation, but not so lively and active a community. I'm trying to start with the types of things with which I feel most comfortable, which are these kind of short, character pieces about traumatized women. I love Satrina and, from what I can tell, the fandom doesn't.

I want to use this platform for fandom-related things, but I've lost the knack. LiveJournal felt different, and I was at a different stage in my life then; I was doing RP and all other sorts of things in which I have no interest now. What's working for any of you, my small but treasured circle? What's going well in your fandom life, in the platforms we now have?