dear yuletide 2012
Oct. 6th, 2012 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raspberryhunter[Edited 11-2-12 for a couple of minor clarifications and to link Draco Concordans.]
Dear Yuletide Writer,
Thank you for writing me a fic! I love all of these fandoms and desperately want fic in all/any of them pretty much equally! Whichever fandom you matched with me on, I am so happy you signed up for one of my crazy random fandoms, and I look forward to whatever you write!
Turandot - Puccini (Turandot, Liu): I love Turandot like mad, and at the same time I cannot deny that it is just a teeming mass of feminist (and in-general-human-being) fail. There is the repeated, moving theme of sacrifice (but only for ROMANTIC LOVE!); the whole lovely idea of vulnerability, of putting your life in someone else's hands (this would have worked much better IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR THE PART WHERE SHE JUST TORTURED AND KILLED HIS FRIEND); the concept of the ice maiden thawing, growing up and gaining the emotions of remorse and regret (IF ONLY IT HADN'T BEEN AS A RESPONSE TO SEXUAL HARASSMENT KISS, NOT THAT I AM BITTER); the feminist sensibilities of Turandot (if only they hadn't manifested in her KILLING PEOPLE, also in being completely betrayed in the last act); the incredibly sweet Timur-Liu filial relationship (terribly shortchanged by the revelation she's only taking care of him because Calaf smiled at her WHAT). AGH, you know?
I just want something that engages with the problematic aspects, here. There are a couple of ways this could go, of course. Darkfic where some or all of the characters reap the consequences of their actions would be totally awesome! I really liked the one Turandot fic fragment that's on AO3. (I don't have much more to say about darkfic, because really, any kind of darkfic -- Turandot cutting off Calaf's head after all and Liu killing her, crackfic where Calaf gets sued for sexual harassment, the people rising up in revolution when they realize how lame all of them are -- would be so cool! So whatever! Go wild!)
You could also try to fix it so that the main characters weren't quite so completely dysfunctional. I had previously written a whole super-long paragraph on this which honestly? You can totally ignore, feel free to do whatever strikes your fancy. But I'm going to include it anyway, just in case any of my ranting here is helpful. [...the main characters could get to partake of some of the lovely things about this opera without being quite so, well, less completely dysfunctional. Where Turandot has emotions other than FRIGID and LOVEBUNNY! Where Liu grows a spine and some self-respect! Where Calaf isn't a complete jerk! (I didn't request Calaf, but would have no problems with him appearing. It would be interesting if his relationship with Turandot and Liu were supportive, or at least honestly adversarial, rather than creepy. I know that may be a hard thing to do, and totally okay if he's just a jerk. Feel free to disregard canon, of course!) Where they all have interests and strengths and conflicts other than HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT ROMANTIC PARTNERS! (Liu obviously has a huge capacity for love and loyalty, although this was squandered on Calaf in the opera. Turandot is obviously extremely intelligent, but in the opera this is all bent sideways. There are so many cool things that could have been done with Calaf (Timur! His riddle prowess!) but which are also all sidelined in favor of his having obsessive stalker behavior instead.) I'd love and adore it especially if Turandot and Liu could have or develop some sort of close relationship (friendship, rivalry, mentoring, frenemy, professional partners, whatever) that doesn't depend on a guy.]
I don't care about the setting -- ancient China, modern-day US, academia-land (Professor Turandot, grad-student Liu, Calaf as a... oh, I don't know, project manager in industry? Administrator? Admin assistant?), lawyer draaaaama, SPAAAAACE, cyberpunk, random-fantasy-land, whatever -- the only thing I ask is that if it's in ancient China or other real-life setting, I'd like it to be more-or-less credible. (Note that I was once a grad student in the hard sciences, so I do know a little about that.)
I would prefer not having Turandot/Liu femmeslash for this, simply because there are so many other kinds of relationships between these two that could be explored other than romantic/sexual (watching this opera rather does turn me off the romantic/sexual angle in general), but if you really want to write it, I'm open to it (though would prefer Turandot/other or Liu/other) as long as it's not the primary driver of their relationship (again, unless you do dark fic -- all bets off in that case). I would also mildly prefer, again unless we're talking darkfic, very little or no het with Calaf, but it's also great as long as a) it doesn't lead to Turandot or Liu losing their selves as they do in the original, and b) the relationship between the women isn't shortchanged -- feel free to disregard canon (in this and any other matters), if that wasn't obvious from the rest of this writeup. (I think I'm saying here that, in general for a story with sympathetic Turandot and Liu, I'd prefer romantic entanglements not to be the primary relationships in this particular story, and I'd prefer Turandot-Liu as the primary relationship.) If all the main characters are made sympathetic, I'd prefer a happy ending, but whatever makes your story work is totally fine!
(Or combining the darkfic and sympathetic-character idea, and something that was dark but with three-dimensional characters who were sometimes sympathetic and sometimes awful -- well, that would be totally awesome. But that also sounds kinda hard, so feel free to ignore that as well :) )
Feel free to totally ignore my prompts and ramblings above; all I want is something that engages with some of the problematic bits of the opera. That's all. In whatever way you would like and is fun to write for you.
If you want more thoughts as to all my FEELINGS about this opera, look here.
Youtube link to Met version, with subtitles ... I have to admit that as long as I don't think too hard about the text and the FAIL, this production actually kinda makes me like all the characters...
Libretto here.
(Um, on reread it looks like I wrote more for Turandot than anything else, but it's because I have ISSUES with Turandot and need to get them all out there! It does not reflect on wanting any fandom more or less than another.)
The Dragon Waiting - Ford (Any): I'm mostly cut-and-pasting from last year's letter, because I still feel the same way that I did last year! I just really love John M. Ford for how he weaves in all kinds of knowledge and allusions; I also love how his plots are so intricate that you have to read the story twice to figure it out; and I absolutely love the incredibly detailed alternate universe in Dragon with its evil Byzantium, all the detail and historical worldbuilding that went into it. Any of that in the fic would be marvelous, though I DO NOT require any of it!
What I'd really love to read about is the fall of Byzantium (if Cynthia/Dimi/Hywel/Gregory succeed in their quest), but it occurs to me that this might be really hard to do, and I certainly don't expect it! I'd love to read about future England in this alternate world (what do Queen Elizabeth or Henry VIII look like in this universe -- do the Tudors ever take the throne, or are they minor noblemen, or what? Hywel and Gregory would still be alive then, presumably) or really anywhere after the events of Dragon. Or something with none of the characters at all, but set in the Dragon universe, would be lovely (though in that case I would have a preference for some historical figure -- don't care which one, or what nationality -- making an appearance) -- we never see the Beautiful City itself; what's it like and what are the rulers like and who do they correspond to in our universe?
But, you know, I think this must be an incredibly hard fandom to write, and John M. Ford must be a really difficult author to write fic about. So feel free to TOTALLY IGNORE what I said above and write what you feel like; I would love ANYTHING related to this book.
ETA: If you matched on this, I can't imagine you don't know about Draco Concordans (if you don't, then I admire you even more for offering it!) -- but just in case...
The People - Zenna Henderson (Any): I adore Zenna Henderson's People stories and always have, and just want more! Though in a completely different way than Ford -- the thing I love most about it, I think, is the effervescent joy, the childlike wonder, that permeates each page. But also... the moving depictions of familial and mentoring relationships, especially the love between teachers and children (the part where Valancy saves the kids in "Ararat," the faceoff between the Francher Kid and the narrator in "Captivity," those make me bawl -- Henderson was a teacher, of course, so that's what she knew the most about; insert whatever you have experience with here); the utter sense of belonging: to a people, to a community, to a family (and which also plays into the teacher-child relationships she depicts); the drive to make things whole (I'm thinking a lot of "Shadow on the Moon" here, and how they are making whole not only Tom's dream but also Remy); the lovely understated way she's constantly drawing from Biblical imagery and quotations and tropes for the themes and images of the stories.
If you need ideas... I'd love to know what Shadow's story is; she's always been in a secondary role as Bethie-too or Remy's Shadow; how does she step into her own rightful place? Did Dr. Curtis learn anything from Dita? What's up with the Kroginolds' story -- they were always troublemakers; I imagine there's a story in how they grew up? But really anything with any character (or none at all, a new story with original characters would be quite excellent), with some of that joy and wonder in it, some of that exuberant borrowing and flavoring with Biblical tropes and quotes, would be totally lovely.
I will say that I tend to be more interested in the Earth stories than in Home or New Home, and I didn't like "Return" as well as some of the others (I guess I just don't like whiny narrators?), but hey, if your muse takes you there, go for it. I have a strong preference for a story that is at least mostly gen, but I'm open to either het or slash as long as canon pairings are respected (e.g., Valancy/Jemmy as a long-standing relationship is canon, and I'd rather Valancy didn't run off with Karen or something).
General: I love plotty fic because I can't write it myself, but by the same token I know it is hard to write and I certainly don't expect it. I love character-driven fic that thinks hard about the ramifications of characters' choices. I love for there to be some sort of character arc or characters (and/or the reader) coming to a greater understanding of something or someone during a fic. I love and adore friendship/partnerships, especially platonic ones, of all gender-variety. I am more a fan of gen than anything else, but I'm open to both het and slash, though I tend to be respectful of healthy overt canon pairings (which basically means that the Zenna Henderson is the only one of these where I respect the canon pairings, hee).
Things I don't like: incest (including Timur-Liu unless it's sufficiently cracked-out that it doesn't present as incest), gratuitous violence, or gratuitous character death. (If it's logical, then I don't mind. For example, you could sell me on a scene where Hywel is corrupted by magic after bringing down Byzantium, because he has nothing left to drive him. Though a happy ending for him would also be totally fine! And of course there are fifty squillion ways there could be non-gratuitous character death in Turandot.) I'm not a huge fan of anything above PG-13 and will probably skim over anything really explicit unless something about the explicitness itself plays into character or plot development, in which case all bets are off :)
ETA: I really like darkfic -- not for Zenna Henderson, pretty pretty please, but would welcome it for Turandot or Dragon Waiting. Regardless of whether you write darkness and despair or redemption and happiness, you will make me very happy.
If you get stuck with your match, Turandot is a fast watch/libretto-read. The People is a large canon of work, but the stories are a fast read, and you could probably read a couple of them ("Ararat" is probably a must, and perhaps "Shadow on the Moon" to get the second-gen perspective) and get the feel of it pretty quickly -- I don't think Henderson herself worried too much about keeping everything strictly canon-compliant detail-wise. The Dragon Waiting is... hm, not that long a book, so may be possible to pick up quickly? But fair warning: it is rather more dense than the other two fandoms I've requested, although the Concordans linked above may be helpful.
Dear Yuletide Writer,
Thank you for writing me a fic! I love all of these fandoms and desperately want fic in all/any of them pretty much equally! Whichever fandom you matched with me on, I am so happy you signed up for one of my crazy random fandoms, and I look forward to whatever you write!
Turandot - Puccini (Turandot, Liu): I love Turandot like mad, and at the same time I cannot deny that it is just a teeming mass of feminist (and in-general-human-being) fail. There is the repeated, moving theme of sacrifice (but only for ROMANTIC LOVE!); the whole lovely idea of vulnerability, of putting your life in someone else's hands (this would have worked much better IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR THE PART WHERE SHE JUST TORTURED AND KILLED HIS FRIEND); the concept of the ice maiden thawing, growing up and gaining the emotions of remorse and regret (IF ONLY IT HADN'T BEEN AS A RESPONSE TO SEXUAL HARASSMENT KISS, NOT THAT I AM BITTER); the feminist sensibilities of Turandot (if only they hadn't manifested in her KILLING PEOPLE, also in being completely betrayed in the last act); the incredibly sweet Timur-Liu filial relationship (terribly shortchanged by the revelation she's only taking care of him because Calaf smiled at her WHAT). AGH, you know?
I just want something that engages with the problematic aspects, here. There are a couple of ways this could go, of course. Darkfic where some or all of the characters reap the consequences of their actions would be totally awesome! I really liked the one Turandot fic fragment that's on AO3. (I don't have much more to say about darkfic, because really, any kind of darkfic -- Turandot cutting off Calaf's head after all and Liu killing her, crackfic where Calaf gets sued for sexual harassment, the people rising up in revolution when they realize how lame all of them are -- would be so cool! So whatever! Go wild!)
You could also try to fix it so that the main characters weren't quite so completely dysfunctional. I had previously written a whole super-long paragraph on this which honestly? You can totally ignore, feel free to do whatever strikes your fancy. But I'm going to include it anyway, just in case any of my ranting here is helpful. [...the main characters could get to partake of some of the lovely things about this opera without being quite so, well, less completely dysfunctional. Where Turandot has emotions other than FRIGID and LOVEBUNNY! Where Liu grows a spine and some self-respect! Where Calaf isn't a complete jerk! (I didn't request Calaf, but would have no problems with him appearing. It would be interesting if his relationship with Turandot and Liu were supportive, or at least honestly adversarial, rather than creepy. I know that may be a hard thing to do, and totally okay if he's just a jerk. Feel free to disregard canon, of course!) Where they all have interests and strengths and conflicts other than HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT ROMANTIC PARTNERS! (Liu obviously has a huge capacity for love and loyalty, although this was squandered on Calaf in the opera. Turandot is obviously extremely intelligent, but in the opera this is all bent sideways. There are so many cool things that could have been done with Calaf (Timur! His riddle prowess!) but which are also all sidelined in favor of his having obsessive stalker behavior instead.) I'd love and adore it especially if Turandot and Liu could have or develop some sort of close relationship (friendship, rivalry, mentoring, frenemy, professional partners, whatever) that doesn't depend on a guy.]
I don't care about the setting -- ancient China, modern-day US, academia-land (Professor Turandot, grad-student Liu, Calaf as a... oh, I don't know, project manager in industry? Administrator? Admin assistant?), lawyer draaaaama, SPAAAAACE, cyberpunk, random-fantasy-land, whatever -- the only thing I ask is that if it's in ancient China or other real-life setting, I'd like it to be more-or-less credible. (Note that I was once a grad student in the hard sciences, so I do know a little about that.)
I would prefer not having Turandot/Liu femmeslash for this, simply because there are so many other kinds of relationships between these two that could be explored other than romantic/sexual (watching this opera rather does turn me off the romantic/sexual angle in general), but if you really want to write it, I'm open to it (though would prefer Turandot/other or Liu/other) as long as it's not the primary driver of their relationship (again, unless you do dark fic -- all bets off in that case). I would also mildly prefer, again unless we're talking darkfic, very little or no het with Calaf, but it's also great as long as a) it doesn't lead to Turandot or Liu losing their selves as they do in the original, and b) the relationship between the women isn't shortchanged -- feel free to disregard canon (in this and any other matters), if that wasn't obvious from the rest of this writeup. (I think I'm saying here that, in general for a story with sympathetic Turandot and Liu, I'd prefer romantic entanglements not to be the primary relationships in this particular story, and I'd prefer Turandot-Liu as the primary relationship.) If all the main characters are made sympathetic, I'd prefer a happy ending, but whatever makes your story work is totally fine!
(Or combining the darkfic and sympathetic-character idea, and something that was dark but with three-dimensional characters who were sometimes sympathetic and sometimes awful -- well, that would be totally awesome. But that also sounds kinda hard, so feel free to ignore that as well :) )
Feel free to totally ignore my prompts and ramblings above; all I want is something that engages with some of the problematic bits of the opera. That's all. In whatever way you would like and is fun to write for you.
If you want more thoughts as to all my FEELINGS about this opera, look here.
Youtube link to Met version, with subtitles ... I have to admit that as long as I don't think too hard about the text and the FAIL, this production actually kinda makes me like all the characters...
Libretto here.
(Um, on reread it looks like I wrote more for Turandot than anything else, but it's because I have ISSUES with Turandot and need to get them all out there! It does not reflect on wanting any fandom more or less than another.)
The Dragon Waiting - Ford (Any): I'm mostly cut-and-pasting from last year's letter, because I still feel the same way that I did last year! I just really love John M. Ford for how he weaves in all kinds of knowledge and allusions; I also love how his plots are so intricate that you have to read the story twice to figure it out; and I absolutely love the incredibly detailed alternate universe in Dragon with its evil Byzantium, all the detail and historical worldbuilding that went into it. Any of that in the fic would be marvelous, though I DO NOT require any of it!
What I'd really love to read about is the fall of Byzantium (if Cynthia/Dimi/Hywel/Gregory succeed in their quest), but it occurs to me that this might be really hard to do, and I certainly don't expect it! I'd love to read about future England in this alternate world (what do Queen Elizabeth or Henry VIII look like in this universe -- do the Tudors ever take the throne, or are they minor noblemen, or what? Hywel and Gregory would still be alive then, presumably) or really anywhere after the events of Dragon. Or something with none of the characters at all, but set in the Dragon universe, would be lovely (though in that case I would have a preference for some historical figure -- don't care which one, or what nationality -- making an appearance) -- we never see the Beautiful City itself; what's it like and what are the rulers like and who do they correspond to in our universe?
But, you know, I think this must be an incredibly hard fandom to write, and John M. Ford must be a really difficult author to write fic about. So feel free to TOTALLY IGNORE what I said above and write what you feel like; I would love ANYTHING related to this book.
ETA: If you matched on this, I can't imagine you don't know about Draco Concordans (if you don't, then I admire you even more for offering it!) -- but just in case...
The People - Zenna Henderson (Any): I adore Zenna Henderson's People stories and always have, and just want more! Though in a completely different way than Ford -- the thing I love most about it, I think, is the effervescent joy, the childlike wonder, that permeates each page. But also... the moving depictions of familial and mentoring relationships, especially the love between teachers and children (the part where Valancy saves the kids in "Ararat," the faceoff between the Francher Kid and the narrator in "Captivity," those make me bawl -- Henderson was a teacher, of course, so that's what she knew the most about; insert whatever you have experience with here); the utter sense of belonging: to a people, to a community, to a family (and which also plays into the teacher-child relationships she depicts); the drive to make things whole (I'm thinking a lot of "Shadow on the Moon" here, and how they are making whole not only Tom's dream but also Remy); the lovely understated way she's constantly drawing from Biblical imagery and quotations and tropes for the themes and images of the stories.
If you need ideas... I'd love to know what Shadow's story is; she's always been in a secondary role as Bethie-too or Remy's Shadow; how does she step into her own rightful place? Did Dr. Curtis learn anything from Dita? What's up with the Kroginolds' story -- they were always troublemakers; I imagine there's a story in how they grew up? But really anything with any character (or none at all, a new story with original characters would be quite excellent), with some of that joy and wonder in it, some of that exuberant borrowing and flavoring with Biblical tropes and quotes, would be totally lovely.
I will say that I tend to be more interested in the Earth stories than in Home or New Home, and I didn't like "Return" as well as some of the others (I guess I just don't like whiny narrators?), but hey, if your muse takes you there, go for it. I have a strong preference for a story that is at least mostly gen, but I'm open to either het or slash as long as canon pairings are respected (e.g., Valancy/Jemmy as a long-standing relationship is canon, and I'd rather Valancy didn't run off with Karen or something).
General: I love plotty fic because I can't write it myself, but by the same token I know it is hard to write and I certainly don't expect it. I love character-driven fic that thinks hard about the ramifications of characters' choices. I love for there to be some sort of character arc or characters (and/or the reader) coming to a greater understanding of something or someone during a fic. I love and adore friendship/partnerships, especially platonic ones, of all gender-variety. I am more a fan of gen than anything else, but I'm open to both het and slash, though I tend to be respectful of healthy overt canon pairings (which basically means that the Zenna Henderson is the only one of these where I respect the canon pairings, hee).
Things I don't like: incest (including Timur-Liu unless it's sufficiently cracked-out that it doesn't present as incest), gratuitous violence, or gratuitous character death. (If it's logical, then I don't mind. For example, you could sell me on a scene where Hywel is corrupted by magic after bringing down Byzantium, because he has nothing left to drive him. Though a happy ending for him would also be totally fine! And of course there are fifty squillion ways there could be non-gratuitous character death in Turandot.) I'm not a huge fan of anything above PG-13 and will probably skim over anything really explicit unless something about the explicitness itself plays into character or plot development, in which case all bets are off :)
ETA: I really like darkfic -- not for Zenna Henderson, pretty pretty please, but would welcome it for Turandot or Dragon Waiting. Regardless of whether you write darkness and despair or redemption and happiness, you will make me very happy.
If you get stuck with your match, Turandot is a fast watch/libretto-read. The People is a large canon of work, but the stories are a fast read, and you could probably read a couple of them ("Ararat" is probably a must, and perhaps "Shadow on the Moon" to get the second-gen perspective) and get the feel of it pretty quickly -- I don't think Henderson herself worried too much about keeping everything strictly canon-compliant detail-wise. The Dragon Waiting is... hm, not that long a book, so may be possible to pick up quickly? But fair warning: it is rather more dense than the other two fandoms I've requested, although the Concordans linked above may be helpful.
