DEAR YULETIDE!

[ishie]

Dear Yuletide writer, I know we've only kind of just met and everything but YOU ARE GREAT AND YOU SHOULD FEEL GREAT. I'm so excited already to see what you do, for real. Yuletide is full of terrifying and wonderful, and so much fun. I really hope my requests don't make you feel like you have to throw yourself down a mineshaft or pull out your teeth or anything. Optional details are optional! But I go into ... uh, great length here, in case you're the kind of writer who likes a lot of ideas.

(In case you want to skip to the good stuff, in no particular order:
KING CREOLE | BACK TO THE FUTURE | SUN RECORDS RPF | GOLDEN BRIDE | 14TH CENTURY RPF | GREEK MYTHOLOGY)

Here's my annual blanket LIKE/NO LIKE thing. But, honestly, if it serves the story, do what makes you happy!

LIKE: apocafic, both hopeful and bleak; fight scenes that make me ache; snappy dialogue; character studies; narrative-heavy stories; missing moments; AUs both serious and crack; bickering for bickering's sake and UST-y banter; road trips; what-ifs; fix-its; tropes played straight and subverted; canon-compliance; crossovers; original characters; experiments in tone and tense; mood pieces and action-tastic epics; SCIENCE!; friendships romantic and platonic; history stuff; worldbuilding and backstory explorations; that kind of fic where you spend six hours researching something that winds up being two words out of the whole story. I generally prefer canon relationships, unless otherwise specified below, and I am terribly vanilla when it comes to kinks.

NO LIKE: non- or dub-con, rape, abuse, and/or incest glamorized or done up as ~romance~; a/b/o; gratuitous character-bashing; treating female characters like crap for no reason (but again that goes back to: if it serves the story, as not every story treats its female characters nobly or well). Other than that, it's pretty much all fair game.

But anyway. I'm ishie on AO3 if you want to see my fic and past gifts (♥♥), there's older stuff on ishieland too, and a terribly organized pinboard and a tumblr that might make you cry with how disjointed and capslocky it is.

If you have questions that this letter doesn't answer, probably the Yuletide mods are the best way to go? But you could probably also ask andthenisay!

OKAY REQUEST TIME *request dance*

KING CREOLE (1958)
Crawfish Seller, Danny Fisher
source: streaming; it runs infrequently on TCM on US cable; and is on DVD & Blu-ray

Before I run you off with my optional details (so many details), let me just say: I would be so happy with anything. ANYTHING. Crawfish Seller and Danny Fisher. Tell me a story. *chinhands* (OKAY SO. Have you seen this movie? I'm sure you have because why would you be offering... Let's start over. THIS MOVIE!!! :DDDD!!!! It's great and I love it so much and I hate to do this to you but: let's ignore everything that happens after the opening song! :D: You know, this one: Crawfish, with Kitty White (from 1:37 on). Because here is what I want. What I forever want. I want Danny and the Crawfish Seller to be in love and secretly together, and everything he's doing and everything she's doing is to try to make it so they can be together. AND THE SONG IS PRETTY OBVIOUSLY CODE FOR WHEN THEY MEET SECRETLY AT NIGHT AMIRITE OR AMIRITE.

We know about him. I want to know about her, and her and him. So, maybe she thought it was only a fling, just to see what it would be like to pretend to be a girl in a world where it doesn't matter who she falls in love with. OR MAYBE HE KNOWS IT'S DOOMED AND ALL OF THE MOVIE IS HIS STUPID ACTING OUT TO GET HER TO HATE HIM? God, he is an unthinking dick aka nineteen-year-old dude, though, so this would work. Or tell me what she's doing during the movie when she's not on screen, which is ALL OF IT after this song. :( Tell me how she struggles and triumphs. Tell me how their paths cross if you aren't starting out with them being together or wanting to be together, or even if you are! Tell me whether she likes selling the crawfish, whether she likes driving the cart, whether she likes standing in knee-high water in the bayou in the mornings, and whether she's pulling up the big cages and thinking how someday maybe she'll have a rice field to flood instead, or it's late afternoon and she's sold her share for the day and she's not in school anymore and she can't afford college and she's not ready for XYZ and now she has a minute to do what she likes. God. Just. Everything. I want everything. Tell me about anything. (I mostly super want them to be a couple though, I can't lie.)

I feel like this is probably the longest of shots in my requests this year. But I want. Crawfish Seller/Danny Fisher, sweet jeebus, yes, gimme. It's all because of A) this song (♥♥ again, I'm gonna keep linking ittttt) and B) that big smacking kiss he throws at like 42 minutes into the movie, which is probably to the dancer across the street but IT'S NOT IT'S TO HIS LOVE THE CRAWFISH SELLER and I CAN'T BE RATIONAL ABOUT THIS. I'M SO SORRY. It's just that they made this movie right at the cusp of the major civil rights movement in America (though without showing any of that in the movie of course! and without having any characters of color who aren't background!), about as deep as you can get in the South, and almost a decade before Loving v Virginia officially killed interracial marriage bans in law (though not always in practice), and I watch it or listen to the song on repeat, and I want it to be this other hugely complex and painful and wonderful thing instead. I WANT THESE POSSIBILITIES IN MY HEAD TO BE THE REALITY OF THE STORY SO BAD. But mostly I want to learn about crawfish and New Orleans and this girl who drives her cart through the French Quarter every morning and the boy who sings with her.


BACK TO THE FUTURE (Movies)
Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen, Gertrude Tannen, Griff Tannen, Biff Tannen
source: streaming 1, 2, 3; and is on DVD and Blu-ray

Yeah, yeah, Marty and Doc and Jennifer and Lorraine and George. I love them. We all do. They're great! But I want to know about TANNENS. I said "and" all four, but a story about any one or combination of them would be fantastic. Do you want to take it back or forward to other generations? DO IT. Did Buford have a wife? Why did he turn to outlawin'? How did he get to be in California? Who raised his baby? How did they deal with living where Buford harassed everybody and was eventually hanged? Who's Gertrude (Biff's grandma)? Buford's (great-?)granddaughter? Daughter-in-law? Who does Biff marry in the improved non-casino original timeline to wind up with a child that eventually produces Griff? What if aside from Buford, Biff, and Griff, the Tannen line is unmarried women who keep their names!! What if all the dudes aren't big dumb jerkfaces! What's your headcanon for this family? I'd really like to read about them being treated fairly as people, not all good or all bad. Maybe a timeline where someone makes a different choice and it isn't a McFly who changes the course of a Tannen's life?

Yep. That. I really enjoy complexity in characters, and was disappointed that the Tannens were pretty one-dimensional, and I've always wanted to know more about Buford and Biff, and the never-seen Gertrude, and where did Griff come from, and and and. Does Biff go somewhere else between picking up the sports book and 1955? Does Griff turn out to not be a dumbass? (Is he in love with one or both of Marty's kids?) Does the casino timeline bleed into another and a Tannen has to fix it instead of a McFly? Does Doc's family run across a Tannen we didn't meet? Do they interfere with Buford's hanging? Or or or. And! Tom Wilson is pretty great—often my favorite part of all three movies on rewatching—so if you channel him, I will adore you for the rest of time. Or OUTATIME. (I'm sorry. It was just sitting there. I had to.)


SUN RECORDS RPF
Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Sam Phillips
source: Wikipedia; you can find the album and sample songs on Amazon

I mean for this to be the actual Million Dollar Quartet, not the Broadway musical version, minus Jerry Lee Lewis because ew, and plus Sam Phillips because yes. Put us in that studio, or in the car afterward, or years later they run into each other somewhere. Or what if the engineer didn't just record that day and Sam didn't just call the paper, what if they put together a tour, or a real album, or a book of photographs and interviews, or a television special, or a movie! Expand that tiny bubble of time to fit whatever you'd want it to be, and tell me all about it!

I love their voices. I love the music. I love this glimpse of what music called to them when it was just for fun and not recording something for commercial release. It's a (fairly) common belief among Elvis fans that he used the Jordannaires and other harmony groups so extensively because he'd always wanted to be part of a group instead of a solo performer. What if the Million Dollar Quartet could have been that? What if he hadn't quite blown up yet at that point, and Sam invited him in to see if this group would work? I really have no objection to having Jerry Lee Lewis included if you really want him; I just wanted to make sure Sam got in. Anyone else who was there (like Elvis' girlfriend, or a studio engineer, or a backup singer, or another Sun performer), or who you want to put there, have fun with it!!


황금신부 | GOLDEN BRIDE (TV 2007)
Heo Dong Gu, Kang Sae Mi, Kang Won Mi, Kim Young Soo
source: with eng subs; subs only

What happens next? That's literally all I want. What happens next for these couples. Or individuals! Do they work out in the long-run? Does the fallout from ... uh, the epic levels of drama elsewhere in the family affect them? Does Dong-gu's mother ever chill the f out for three seconds? WHAT ABOUT THE BABIES? (I don't even like babies; I just want to see Won-mi or Young-soo clumsily caring for children and crying because they aren't being taken care of themselves? It's a thing, shhh. Shhhh.)

Oh man, were you as obsessed with this show as I was? I was SO OBSESSED I would watch before the subs were even out, as though I could understand anything that was happening. (I couldn't.) (But how great was Ji-young's cry-screaming btw? A+++) Anyway! Anything you want to write for this would be so fantastic, I can't even tell you.

I fell into the show because Super Junior and Kim Heechul, and then it was so hilarious and over the top and dramatic and amazing. I still try to get people to watch it, even though 60+ hour-long episodes in a language they don't speak or understand is such a huge stumbling block. But they would love it!!!

I'd love to read anything, honestly: serious drama, goofy bumbling, sappy romance, porn(?? I feel really awkward suggesting it for a Kdrama like this but OBVIOUSLY it needs to exist amirite), more secrets revealed, curtainfic, adventures, weirdness, tropey goodness, whatever!! Maybe Won-mi tries to give Dong-gu a makeover because someone's coming home from overseas and she wants to make her jealous about her great domestic life, except Dong-gu's taken to wearing spats or a beret or something? Maybe Young-soo accidentally becomes a supermodel and Sae-mi's like, but wait that's supposed to be me?? IDK IDK IDK I will just love anything at all.

eta: I used a different romanization than the nomination tags do, but whatever you prefer is fine with me!


14TH CENTURY CE RPF
Anne of Bohemia, Isabella of France, Joan of England, Philippa of Hainault
source: wikipedia? it's hard to source info about them in readily available texts :| (Alison Weir's Queen Isabella is supposed to be quite good, though.)

We've got hundreds of years of junk about their husbands/fathers/sons/brothers. I want stories about them. Especially about having to leave their homes to marry strangers. Especially Joan of England, who died on the way (one of the first English victims of the Black Death :( ) and was only 14 or 15 years old at the time, and Isabella, who was also called the She-Wolf of France. Anything, really! I picked all four but any combination or solo would be great, too.

I've been watching/listening to a lot of Shakespeare's histories and reading quite a bit of pre-Tudor biographies lately, and I'm always struck by two things: how comparatively little importance is placed (by us, mostly) on the marriages that helped broker and break alliances and treaties, and on the women who were so married off and what they did once they were. And most especially in how they related to each other: Isabella of France schemed with her lover to replace her husband on the throne with her son, who she married to Philippa of Hainault. Philippa's favored daughter, Joan of England, left to marry in Spain and never made it there, dying in a camp along the way. Anne of Bohemia came to marry Richard II, against the wishes of most of his court and one of the two rival popes of the time (!!). (re: Anne of Bohemia, I am S U P E R interested in how she was repeatedly cast as the champion of the people against Richard; and re: Isabella of France, omg everything.) Anyway. Royal ladies! How do they talk to each other? What do they know/remember/wish of each other? Do they resent their lives or are they content? Did they dream of being queens regnant, with no kings above them? How much influence do they have over their relatives? Do they think about the generations to come? *_*


GREEK MYTHOLOGY
Demeter, Eileithyia, Hestia, Persephone
source: wikipedia, your battered old copy of Edith Hamilton, Bulfinch, whatever; Alcestis has a version of Persephone I quite liked; past Yuletides?

Persephone is kind of the fandom bicycle come Yuletide, I know. I want a different version, one where Hades doesn't really even figure into the story except as a device for Persephone's actions. Retell the story so it's all about Persephone and Demeter, about Persephone making choices, about rebellion, about subjugation, about personal liberty, about destiny. About Persephone and expectation, Demeter and loss of control, &c, &c. Eileithyia and Hestia, man, give me something. Hestia's basically a big boring wooden block of a goddess: carve her out so we can see her. Eileithyia gets COMPLETELY overlooked, and as the goddess of childbirth, she'd have been a pretty huge deal to a lot of women and families and when she is included she's fierce and bloody and vengeful. How do they tie into the story of Demeter, and Persephone, and the two together? How do all four of the women live as goddesses (especially goddesses of traditionally feminine spheres) in a pantheon that's ruled by a brute like Zeus and abetted by his bros who think it's totally okay to swan-rape or golden-shower-impregnate or abduct total strangers who look super hot by the side of a lake or a river?

UGH GIMME. I always love the new and interesting takes on these ancient stories that come with every Yuletide. Surprise me! Or write something really traditional! Add in your favorite god or goddess or mortal! Set it whenever, wherever, however, whyever. Romantic, sexual, asexual, femslash, slash, gen, het, adventure-y, sci-fi?, farce, bestiality (I cringe a little typing that but, hey, Greek myths, right?): whatever you want. I'd prefer it stay recognizably these specific characters and not, say, backdoored Characters From Other Fandoms or anything, though.

Lord, this is the longest letter ever. I'm so sorry. Have fun! You'll do great!