Dear Yuletide Author 2015

[mayhap]

Dear Yuletide author,

I am so excited that we matched on one of these fandoms! Getting a fic written in any one of them will absolutely make my Yuletide, and I can't wait to read whatever you come up with.

I've attempted to write prompts that are somewhat specific without being too restrictive. My hope is that something will inspire you, and that could be one small detail that moves you in a direction I haven't even thought of. If the fandom and characters are all the inspiration you need, then by all means, go for it!

I enjoy a wide variety of stories, all year round but especially at Yuletide. I like short, punchy stories and longer, plottier stories, explicitly porny and/or kinky stories and coy stories that are all about the teasing and the implications, stories with some kind of meta angle to them and stories that engage with the source material 100% on its own level, stories with pairings that might be very unusual and stories that stick strictly to canon pairings, if applicable. One thing that I always enjoy is stories that are written in a very particular style or manner, like a set of letters or a faux-academic paper or something; if you have any ideas along those lines, feel free to pursue them!

Dialogues — Plato
Socrates, Alcibiades

I ship it. If Plato didn't want me to ship it, he shouldn't have made the sexual tension between Socrates and Alcibiades so compelling! I would love a story where Alcibiades DOES manage to seduce Socrates—maybe he turns Socrates' philosophical arguments against him, or maybe he fails but Socrates finds himself tempted for the first time because Alcibiades is trying to attract him with philosophy. I love the whole thing where the conventional ideas about what is attractive are upended and Socrates is a sex god and Alcibiades is desperate for his attentions. If you'd rather continue the dynamic of unrequited desire, I would also be totally into that!

Since Plato was basically writing RPF and it was definitely shaped by his own ideas, I definitely feel like you could do something that plays with the idea that Plato had it wrong and something else really happened between them. On the other hand, I love the way he characterizes Socrates and Alcibiades in the Symposium even if it may be completely his own invention.

Green Sky Trilogy — Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Pomma D'ok, Teera Eld

I love the worldbuilding in these books, especially the cross-cultural friendship and partnership between Pomma and Teera. I love the radical utopianism of the Kindar but also how much they struggled with accepting the true nature of the Erdlings and integrating them into a new unified society. I'd really like to read a story about them growing up together as the Kindar and the Erdlings adjust to each other and return of spirit-powers, with as broad or as narrow a scope as you would like to imagine.

I think Pomma/Teera would be an adorable pairing and that you could also do incredibly fun setting-specific things with it—trying to keep your crush a secret from someone you can pense with? Gruntspreking to give you and your partner some privacy or engage in some bondage? Kiniporting sex toys, even? Not to mention differences in ideas about romantic relationships, which we see in the books as well, even though only heterosexual relationships are mentioned. But it's also absolutely fine with me if you'd rather pair them off with other people or with no one; I wouldn't feel like you were breaking up my pairing or anything.

The Professor — Charlotte Brontë
William Crimsworth, Hunsden Yorke Hunsden, Frances Evans Henri

I am fascinated by Hunsden Yorke Hunsden. From the beginning he alternates between needling William and performing these extremely thoughtful favors for him, although it's not always easy for him to get under William's skin since William perversely enjoys some of his bluntness. He brings out such an interesting side of Frances when he meets her, too -- I love that promptly she gets into three arguments with him in a row, and the third time she doesn't even believe in the argument she's making; she just wants to fight with him!

I'm particularly interested in a story set when William and Frances are living in England and Hunsden is their neighbor. I love how he has apparently latched onto their family in lieu of starting their own, especially the way he seems to practically be a coparent to Victor. I would love more about their daily life as it's sketched in that last chapter, or a story about something that happens as Victor gets older and goes to school, as William is worrying about.

I would also love threesome fic! William would be almost hopelessly scandalized by the prospect, I think, and probably Frances too, but then with the dynamic both she and Hunsden have with William where they love to tease him I can just imagine it working somehow. I do love stories where characters fumble their way into unusual relationships or sexual practices without quite knowing what they're doing or having the usual vocabulary to talk about it, which is sort of what I would picture. But they are already totally my OT3 exactly the way they are in canon and I will also be completely happy if you don't take it any farther than that.

The Woman in the Wall — Patrice Kindl
Anna Newland, Francis Albright

I'm especially interested in futurefic exploring how Anna interacts with the outside world, set any time after the events of the book. I love her highly distinctive perspective and her willingness to explore unfamiliar and intimidating things but also judge them. I'd be curious to see her navigating any or all of: a new home, the city of Chicago, the late 90s internet, and of course her new blended family. I don't have a strong preference for whether you get or keep Anna and Francis together, but I do find it fascinating that the first person Anna gets to know who is outside of her immediate family, which is such a huge step for her, ends up being brought into her immediate family after all, and how, if at all, she would explain the complexities of that relationship to outsiders.

Most of all I just love this very peculiar book, with its very cracky premise worked out in such detail, and I'm interested in whatever story it should happen to inspire you to write.

For stalking purposes, I am mayhap on Dreamwidth, crossposted to mayhap on Livejournal, and mayhap on AO3; on tumblr I am pinchofnutmeg, because mayhap was taken, and also I mostly post ancient and medieval art there anyway. Feel free to take a gander at these tags ("dear author" and "yuletide") for stuff from Yuletides past if you so desire. Happy Yuletide!