dear yuletide!

[ishie]

Hallooooooo Yuletide writer! I wasn't going to sign up this year, but, well. Here we are! THANK YOU ALREADY FOR WRITING FOR ME. I can't wait to see what you do. Full stop! Yuletide is full of terrifying and wonderful, and if it tilts too far toward terrifying, or if they make you feel like you have to throw yourself down a mineshaft or pull out your teeth or anything, remember: Optional details are optional! I do go into ... uh, great length here, in case you're the kind of writer who likes a lot of ideas, though.

Here's my annual blanket LIKE/NO LIKE thing. (Bottom line is really: 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 UH PLACEHOLDER SORRY I FORGOT TO ASK PEOPLE IF IT'S OKAY TO ASK THEM.

So, these requests, in no particular order!

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!!


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.

NOTE: This is a repeat of a request from last year, which led to a REALLY BEAUTIFUL MADNESS GIFT that I do not want to intimate was inadequate in any way at all. The truth is it was SO WONDERFUL that I'm being greedy and hoping lightning strikes twice. So, again, last year's request repeated:

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? *_*


ARTHURIAN MYTHOLOGY
Elaine of Benoic, Elaine of Astolat, Elaine of Garlot, Elaine of Corbenic
source: wikipedia, your battered old copy of Malory; Project Camelot;

Elaines! Are any of them the same Elaines? I kind of hope they are. One woman with these different ways of telling her story, etc. Or lots of different Elaines! How do they feel about the ties between them being these knights and lost loves and hopeless quests, and all that jazz. Anything at all would be great.

This didn't quite make my request cut last year, and I've kind of forgotten the ALL-CONSUMING REASON why it was on the list in the first place. OH WAIT, no, I didn't. I'm completely fascinated by these four Elaines, some of whom we know a lot about and some of whom we don't and which of them are distinct and separate women and which aren't and what if Elaine of Astolat didn't give a shit about Lancelot the way the story tells it (or what if she did! Let's have her tell it!) or what if Elaine of Corbenic is only remembered as tricking Lancelot because that's the story he tells. Oh my god, if you want to roll with the canonical stories (whichever canon you want to go with!) instead and maybe flesh them out a little more so they aren't just "and then so-and-so did this and so-and-so did that and so they did smite them on the pate" things? I'm getting dizzy. Anything, everything, all the Elaines, one Elaine, Multi-Laine 3000, a hundred duck-sized Elaines, Elaines who hate Lancelot, Elaines who are Lancelot, Elaines who seduce Guinevere instead, Elaines who are daughters and mothers and lovers and friends, Elaines whose stories aren't romantic or easy or whose are, maybe even Elaines who weren't technically nominated added into the mix? OH WOW, DID YOU JUST FEEL THE EARTH MOVE?

But, seriously, thank you! Happy Yuletide!!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Ishie,

I am currently writing an article for an upcoming issue of Transformative Works and Cultures (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/announcement/view/25) on classical (ie. ancient Greek and Roman) literature and fanfiction. My article is about the importance of love in fanfiction and in the discourse surrounding its production. I'm looking in particular at Historical RPF in Yuletide and the conversations that spring up around it.

Would you be willing to give me permission to quote a small section of this Yuletide letter in my article? The letter would not be linked directly in my article (i.e. there'd be no URL), but would be cited in this format: Dreamwidth, Ishie, [date]. I'd be happy to show you the article so you can see the context, or to answer any concerns you might have.

You can email me at anna.wilson@utoronto.ca .

All best,

Anna