ageorwizardry

Hello, Yuletide writer!

Thank you for writing for me!

General Info

I like stories of all ratings. Stories in any tense (past, present, etc.) and person (first person, third person, etc.) are fine. (Want to do second person, future tense, fic formats like emails/other found documents, or something even more experimental? I'm here for that, too!) I have no squicks or triggers you need to avoid.

Some things I especially like are: threesomes, hurt/comfort, trust, stories where people act like they like each other, people who really care about doing their work well. There's also a common theme in several of my requests this year of appreciating the layers of complication adult relationships can have, whether it's loving different people at the same or loving the same person differently over time.

In addition to my prompts, my letter contains additional notes about the sources—my reactions/feelings toward them or info about where to find them. In the case of Last Breath, I've also transcribed the portions of the book/chapter relevant to the character I'm requesting.

I've written much longer prompts/notes for some fandoms than for others, but this is not a sign of my relative enthusiasm! Believe me, my Yuletide requests earn their slots against fierce competition, and I'd be delighted with a story for any of them.

AO3 username: Age or Wizardry (ageorwizardry) (treats are enabled)

Last Breath - Peter Stark (Chapter 5: Steller's Last Laugh, or Better Living Through Botany: Scurvy)

Character: Myrna

Request:
I don't even have a clear idea of what kind of story I want to request here, it just makes me happy every time I think of Myrna, so I'd like to see more of her!

She knows Phil so well! She knows she can't be with him anymore! She still loves him and wishes him well! She can predict the exact way he is going to be a dumbass on his sailing trip adventure and mitigate it pre-emptively. She KNOWS what is UP. She knows what she wants out of life, and I hope she gets it.

(Phil doesn't have to be in or even mentioned in the story, of course—which maybe you would have assumed from the nomination and character request anyway!—it's just hard for me to talk about what I like about her without mentioning him at all, since in the book we only know about her via that context.)

Additional notes:
Fandom promo!

Relevant quotations from the book:

"Phil could have switched on the salon's 12-volt electric lights but preferred the soft glow of the reproduction brass oil lamp that he'd purchased for $199 at the ship's chandlers before he'd left Seattle three days earlier. His first discovery on this voyage of self-discovery had been that nautical atmosphere did not come cheap."

"Phil's girlfriend, Myrna, had given him Steller's journal just before he set sail. Or rather, his ex-girlfriend. Several months earlier, when he began planning the voyage, he'd asked her to accompany him. She'd thought about it for a while; in the end, she'd turned it down—and turned down Phil, more or less, along with it. Things just weren't going to work between them, she'd said. She wanted a settled, predictable life. She wanted a nice house, a vegetable garden, a regular job with regular hours, and children. He was too restless for that—or so she'd said. He had protested, claiming that he wanted that life too—someday, although in truth he wasn't sure. But first he had to make this sea voyage. He had to do this before he did anything else. Couldn't she understand that?

'Yes, I can understand that," she'd said. 'Just don't expect me to be waiting for you when you return.'

That had been the last they'd seen of each other. But as Phil made his last-minute supply runs, from the chandler's to the grocery store to the bank, with stops in between, he returned to his boat at its downtown mooring to find Steller's journal placed carefully on the deck, along with a small package wrapped in brown paper that bore Myrna's return address. He dropped the book through the hatchway onto his berth and angrily stowed the package below without opening it."

"His plan—admittedly vague—was to sail off somewhere and read the journals and drink the wine until he figured out what to do next with his life."

"He'd proudly christened her [his boat] the Myrna Loy, after the actress and after his girlfriend, who at that point he'd still hoped would accompany him. His chances of seeing her again, however, hadn't been helped when the shipyard painters misspelled it the Myrna Lay."

"It was then, on the little shelf above the galley sink, that he spotted the package wrapped in brown paper Myrna had left on board along with the Steller journal. In his anger at her, he'd stashed the package here before he'd cast off. Now it occurred to him that maybe it contained food. Maybe even fresh fruit.

He snatched the package off the shelf and tore it open. Inside was a small cardboard box. He ripped apart the box. There was tissue paper stuffed inside it. He could hear something rattling inside the tissue paper. He shredded the tissue and found a small plastic bottle. He held it up to the lamplight. The plastic was dark-colored—strong light could destroy the potency of its contents—and the label was marked 'Vitamin C Supplement, 500 mg.'

Taped to the bottle was a note. Phil read it. 'To keep you safe. Love, Myrna.'"

Widow Clicquot (2023)

Characters: Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, François Clicquot, Louis Bohne
Request:

"You like him."
"Yes. I do."
"I see the way you are with one another."
"Are you jealous?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I know you love me. And because I believe we must be free to feel whatever we feel, so that we never mistake rebellion for reality. Because I like his company too."
"You like his company?"
"I do."

Man, for like a minute there I thought they were heading for a happy threesome! And then that did not happen. But it could in fanfiction! What if they all got to love each other at the same time? I loved loved loved those glimpses of the physical affection between François and Louis, and Barbe-Nicole's lack of jealousy, and how much Barbe-Nicole and François loved each other—put these ingredients together!

If you want to write about sexytimes with any/all of them—some possible elements I find interesting are: involving any of the accoutrements of wine production (from tasting the finished products all the way to the mud of the fields the grapes grow in); reading/quoting sexy literature/letters to each other; the domineering streak in Barbe-Nicole demonstrated when she kisses Louis and then tells him "Now, get out of my office." (I LOVED that line.) And I always love non-heteronormative sex.

I'm not sure I see a way to a happy alternate ending for all three of them, without any way of identifying in nineteenth-century France whatever mental illness François is dealing with, much less how to treat it. But the three of them can share happiness along the way, even if it still leads to sadness.

Even if they're not all together at the same time, focusing on the important relationships between each pair of them would make me happy. For instance, would Barbe-Nicole and Louis ever talk about Louis' past relationship with François after Barbe-Nicole and Louis get together after François' death?

Barbe-Nicole tells her father-in-law that they both failed to recognize that François needed help, and that's why he's dead—she must feel such grief and guilt over her perception of failing him. The last thing she tells him is "Go to sleep, my love," right after putting down the bottle he uses to help him sleep, and she must feel so haunted by that (even if of course it's not actually as simple as him deciding to kill himself because she said that).

I really feel for Barbe-Nicole being so haunted by François in every corner of their home, even as she tries to move ahead into the future they had planned for themselves together. Perhaps the haunting could even be literal, and François could be a ghost?

François singing to the vines and getting Barbe-Nicole to do so as well reminded me of a beekeeping tradition I've heard about, where when the beekeeper marries, the new spouse has to be introduced to the bees, and somebody also needs to tell the bees when the old beekeeper has died. Perhaps the vines kept growing so well for Barbe-Nicole because she already sang for them and they knew her?

If you do want to try for a happy ending, I'll also note that in general, the approach I prefer for a "happy ending" with mental illness in stories is that of characters finding ways to manage it/work around it/live with it, although the effects never go away entirely—and not a solution that magically fixes everything.

I have started reading the book the movie is based on, and so far what I've mainly learned is how much was invented just for the movie :-D That being the case, feel free to port the character dynamics into a different setting if you'd like to play around with it (or just don't want to do historical research :-P)—an alternate past with magic (like the couple of magic ideas I have above)? an In Space AU is always fun? possibly a sort-of crossover with my Midland request?? or bring your own ideas!

Additional notes (highly miscellaneous):
Fandom promo!

From the preview, I was not expecting François to be nearly as much a part of the movie as he was! Since obviously the premise of the movie is that she's a widow, I figured we wouldn't see much of him after the early part of the film. I love the interwoven dual timelines, converging on the center point of François' death, the slow reveal of the full extent of what she's haunted by.

That line they exchange about "wanting to die in your arms" is really striking, especially how in the end François said he wanted to die in Barbe-Nicole's arms...and then he died alone. (Not that dying in her arms would have really been any better outcome, necessarily..? But it's a heartbreaking sign of the feelings of isolation that often accompany suicide, that he must have felt so alone at his death.)

The parts of the movie I find the most clunky are probably supposed to be the most affecting—the Wheel speech about how she wants to conduct the management of the vineyard, and the whole "I don't know—I am not just one self" speech in front of the court. The Wheel speech doesn't seem to really go anywhere—she says she has to give up her idea of the wheel in the very next scene. And the speech in front of the court just does not seem optimally designed to convince the authorities to let her keep her vineyard, which is presumably her goal! When Louis asks her, "Understanding that I would run the vineyard as I see fit, with you by my side, given everything you know of me, and that we've never hidden anything from one another—Barbe-Nicole, will you marry me?" and she says "No"—very affecting! true to character! but also...isn't that exactly "remaining a widow for the sole purpose of running a business"? Not marrying someone she loves because she still wants to control how the vineyard is run? The precise reason she risks losing her vineyard? I love an affecting speech that changes perspectives as much as the next person! But, it's more powerful when it makes sense :-P

I do not know anything about wine—so if you do, I am prepared to admire your expertise! but I may not be best equipped to appreciate it :-D (I do hope to learn from the book a bit more about her "innovations" that "revolutionized the industry" as mentioned in the closing credits—since about all of that that shows up on screen is Barbe-Nicole pouring liquids in and out of glassware while peering intently at them).

Midland - The Mountain Goats (Song)

No characters
Request:
The whole thing, and especially the line "I've got room in my house for you," is such a beautiful expression of love. I'd love a story about the person doing the inviting, and the person they invite coming to stay there, finding a place with the quiet and rest and peace they need.

(Or, since this is an invitation—is it even possible the person refuses?)(Does the world actually go down in flames?) Feel free to engage with some of the darker elements in the lyrics if you want to! But I would still like there to be a feeling of kindness and tenderness at least between the people in the song.

Additional notes
Stream at the band's Bandcamp (you can stream at least a few times for free)
Lyrics here
Fandom promo!

Feel free not to use them for anything, but in case it's of any interest, I also particularly love these lines:

"Three years I lived next door to the airport
So nothing you can say to me can get on my nerves"

"A family of possums that have made their home underneath the front steps
They are majestic in their own beady-eyed, homely way"

The Anomaly - Hervé Le Tellier

Worldbuilding
Request:

"I think we're even dealing with some sort of test. To take the idea further, it may be precisely because we can now envision the idea of being programs that the simulation is offering us this test. And we'd better get it right, or at least make something interesting out of it."

"Why's that?" Silveria asks.

"Because if we fail, the entities running this simulation could just shut it down."

Anything: I'm interested in anything you do for this!

I otherwise haven't found the idea that we're all living in a simulation all that compelling, but I find it so interesting that the test is clearly failed and the simulation ends on the last page. And to think: the Chinese government hiding the existence of their duplicate plane and sequestering the passengers (apparently permanently) didn't fail the test. Even the malicious killing of one set of duplicates caused by the (publicly-known) duplicate plane that landed in the US didn't fail the test. But the American president choosing to shoot down the next duplicate of the same plane (…the triplicate??), killing all aboard: that failed the test and ended the simulation. What does this suggest about the priorities and ethical standards of the entities running the test? Could there be other conditions that would also fail the test, and if so, I wonder what they are?

What would have happened if the triplicate plane had been allowed to land? Would the same plane just have kept coming again and again? Were there/would there have been any future versions of the duplicate plane that landed in China? Do any other places see their own versions of a duplicate plane? Do any other strange events start occurring as part of this phenomenon? Or you could do a close-in focus on any of the characters—what additional alternate branching pathways could unfold for them?

Or you could explore further into the entities running the simulation! Who are they? What are the goals of the simulation? Is this a serious-business experiment or just some folks fucking around? Is there future IRB overseeing experiments on virtual subjects? Who's funding this? (If any of these questions even apply..?)

Or: there were a lot of other people on the plane! What are any of their stories?

Additional notes:
Don't worry about whether you're fulfilling the "Worldbuilding" tag—anything you write will count as worldbuilding to me, even if the story just focuses on individual characters.

As I said above, I don't usually find the idea that we're all in a simulation all that compelling—especially if it's paired with the idea that that's by far the most likely option (as advocated by at least one character in the book). 700 years ago nobody could have imagined virtual simulations; by whatever logic we conclude a virtual simulation is our most likely reality now—how on earth can we know the most likely option isn't actually something that nobody will be able to imagine until 700 years from now?

But I read this whole book not knowing if it was going to turn out to be Actually Science Fiction, or the kind of literary fiction that uses science fictional concepts as symbolism or set dressing but doesn't really treat them as real on the level of the story. And I was delighted that the simulation scenario meant the book clearly did resolve into science fiction at the very end when the simulation was terminated!

(And it does seem somewhat appropriate that the American president—never named, but identifiable—is the one responsible for the end of the world as we know it.)

Robot Dreams (2023)

Characters: Dog, Robot
Request:
This is an animated movie with no spoken dialogue, and it may be the most emotionally complex thing I watch all year.

I really thought for a minute that Dog and his new robot friend were going to end up at the rooftop cookout with Robot and his new friend, so you could just show me that and it would be fun! (Hey, Robot! Dog! Did you know you can have more than one friend!?)(Even if you're doing the "couple" interpretation—you can still have more than one romantic relationship at a time, too!)

Or you could show something from even farther in the future, when they've both accumulated even more layers of complication in their lives—whether actually meeting up again, just thinking about each other, or perhaps keep just barely missing each other in lives that are so close to being interwoven again but never quite connect up.

Additional Notes:
Fandom promo!

Such a complex and compelling mix of emotions!

It's like: You made a friend, but then you had to leave your friend in a terrible situation. You didn't just leave them there; you tried everything you could to get them back, but it didn't work, so you have to just wait. In the meantime, life goes on. You do the right things to try to make friends, and just encounter mockery. You do the right things to try to make friends, and this time it works!—until that friend suddenly leaves too. When you can finally see your first friend again…no, you can't. They're gone, and you never get an explanation, and still you have to go on, and things just keep happening, more and more things piling up together and making up your life.

Or from Robot's point of view: you're trapped and miserable and terrified and you are so alone and there is nothing you can do. But still, there is the bird's nest, and you got to watch the hatchlings grow, and help them fly. Still there are some things for you to enjoy. And even a situation that seems inescapable can eventually change for the better and lead to something new.

(Like in my promo post, I fear that trying to describe the mix of emotions this movie evokes only sounds trite.)

Feel free to lean in to any and all the layers of emotion here—the melancholy, the uncertainty, the sweetness, the joy.

Hello, writer!

I also requested Adam's Rib, Wreck-It Ralph, and Together Again for smut4smut last year (2023 letter)—I picked a slightly different assortment of tags this year, but any from last year I didn't also select this year are still welcome!

All my requests are for fanfiction, and I have treats enabled should anyone wish to write one for me.

All my prompt ideas are just suggestions! If you have an idea from the request tags that diverges from my specific prompts, please go with it—one of the great pleasures of fic exchanges can be getting wonderful things it would never have occurred to me to ask for!

( General Info )

( Wreck-It Ralph )

( Adam's Rib )

( Together Again )

( Laputa: Castle in the Sky )

( A Taste of Gold and Iron - Alexandra Rowland )

Hello, Yuletide writer!

One of the great pleasures of Yuletide for me has been getting wonderful surprises I couldn't even have thought of asking for in the first place, so if you get a different idea from the specific suggestions in any of my requests, please go for it!

I like stories of all ratings. Stories in any tense (past, present, etc.) and person (first person, third person, etc.) are fine. (Want to do second person, future tense, fic formats like emails/other found documents, or something even more experimental? I'm here for that, too!) I have no squicks or triggers you need to avoid.

AO3 username: Age or Wizardry (ageorwizardry)

( Our Town's Libraries - Tom Gauld )

( take me to the moooon (Webcomic) )

( The Three Pigs - David Wiesner )

( The Goblin and the Empty Chair - Mem Fox & Leo Dillon & Diane Dillon )

Aiee, I did not mean to leave this letter saying it was still in progress for so long! I'm afraid I got distracted by another exchange I was working on with a recent deadline.

I've neatened up the links to previous exchange letters where I requested the same fandoms, but otherwise I didn't add anything; I think I've probably said enough to be going on with!

( La Fille du Diable | Devil's Daughter (1946) )

( Adam's Rib (1949) )

( If I Had a Million (1932) )

( Vivacious Lady (1938) )

( Together Again (1944) )

( Gerald Poole and the Pirates - Johannes T. Evans )

( The Henchmen of Zenda - K. J. Charles )

( The Brothers Sinister Series - Courtney Milan )

( Babette's Feast (1987) )

Hello, dear Crossworks writer—and pinch hitter! Thank you so much for picking up my requests.

As general notes:

I've requested fic for everything.

I understand and agree with the definitions of "crossover" and "fusion" used for the request, but I still find the line between them can seem rather fuzzy—so I've opted into both for all my requests (I didn't want you having to worry over what counted as which!). Likewise, AU remixes, timeline changes/shenanigans, and other alterations to source settings are also welcome.

Treats are enabled and welcome!

I've included prompts as ideas and I hope you find them inspiring, but as always, one of the things I love about exchanges is getting wonderful things I could never even have asked for! So if you get an idea that's distinct from my prompts, please follow your joy—and I'm sure it will be my pleasure as well.

My first three requests make sort of a set, in that my roommate has had several brilliant crossover ideas as a result of our movie nights—usually she'd say "there must be a crossover of this on AO3 already," and I'd look it up and find there actually wasn't! So I'd love to see any of these brought to life, in whatever way you like.

( Bringing Up Baby (1938), Calvin & Hobbes )

( Home Alone (Movies), Calvin & Hobbes )

( Home Alone (Movies), Eloise - Kay Thompson (ill. Hilary Knight) )

( The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner, Biggles Series - W. E. Johns )

And these last two first appeared as Yuletide requests (you can read that letter here if you like), but it can be tough to request/get crossovers in Yuletide, so I thought I'd give them another try in a crossover-dedicated exchange!

( Babette's Feast (1987), Good Omens (TV) )

( The Brothers Sinister Series - Courtney Milan, The Henchmen of Zenda - K. J. Charles )

Hello, writer!

Since I did, as I thought I would, go out as an initial pinch hit, I'm including some notes about each source and how you can find them. I want it to be as easy as possible for you to have options if you want them!

All my requests are for fanfiction, and I have treats enabled should anyone wish to write one for me.

All my prompt ideas are just suggestions! If you have an idea from the request tags that diverges from my specific prompts, please go with it—one of the great pleasures of fic exchanges can be getting wonderful things it would never have occurred to me to ask for!

( General Info )

( Katamari Damacy )

( Together Again (1944) )

( Gerald Poole and the Pirates - Johannes T. Evans )

( Adam's Rib (1949) )

( The Emperor's New Groove (2000) )

( Wreck-It Ralph )

( Lilywhite Boys Series - K. J. Charles )

Hello, Holly Poly writer!

I wanted to complete this letter with some notes about the sources and their availability—especially since I know you picked my requests up as a pinch-hit (and thank you for doing that!), I want it to be as easy as possible for you to have options for what to write if you want them!

Some general notes as to my likes and dislikes: it's gonna be pretty easy! I don't have any major squicks/triggers you need to avoid. I'm good with fic at any level of explicit/sexual content—or none, if that's what you prefer! I'm also very open to kinky content in fic if you want to write it, but don't require it if you don't! (It doesn't even really matter if it's a kink I'm already particularly into or not—if you think it makes sense for the characters and their relationships, I'm interested in reading it.)

The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner

Attolia | Irene/Eugenides/Relius
Attolia | Irene/Eugenides/Relius/Teleus
Attolia | Irene/Eugenides/Relius/Relius's many many lovers
Attolia | Irene/Eugenides/Relius/Relius's many many lovers/Teleus

Request: My thesis for this request: I see and understand all the Irene/Eugenides/Costis fic, but I think there is AT LEAST as much justification for Irene/Eugenides/Relius and I'd love to see some more of it!

What was going *on* in that scene in the infirmary when Gen kissed Irene on the cheek, then said "Jealous, Relius?" and kissed Relius too? (Yes, this scene *is* the seed of my feral longing for this threesome!) We've seen Irene comfort Gen after a nightmare about her cutting off his hand; do Gen and Relius ever share a moment like that over their respective hand trauma? (And could it involve hand kissing?) Give me the twisty complexity, the tenderness between these characters who never expected to find such a thing with each other, or them learning to navigate the dizzying new heights of trust with each other they achieve after the events of the third book.

+ Teleus - I was really delighted when I read the description of Teleus in the cast list for the last book ("The captain of the Royal Guard. He only has one lover."), before reading the book, and thought, hm, the parallel construction with Relius's description leads me to believe that Relius might be Teleus's one lover. And then be right! This adds another beautiful layer of complexity to their duties and loyalties (and another layer of agony to Relius's arrest and imprisonment in the third book). Long-term lovers seem rare for Relius aside from Teleus; how does Teleus adjust when the king and queen become Relius's lovers as well?

+ Relius's "many, many lovers" - I think I'm maybe not ever getting over the fact that the description of Relius in the actual cast list for the final book is "He was the secretary of the Archives, with many, many lovers; one of whom turned out to be a spy for the Mede Emperor." That it apparently takes two "many"s and a comma to accurately express the number of his lovers! That he ever took all these lovers in the first place given the obvious risks involving his position, and continued even after these risks proved true in the form of the spy from the Mede empire! What does Relius's risk assessment look like in this area, and what are the reasonable (or batshit) precautions he does/doesn't take to mitigate those risks?

The aforementioned kiss-in-the-infirmary scene:

Eugenides looked from one silent face to another. "You must speak sometime." He brushed his wife's cheek with his hand and bent to kiss her softly on the cheek. Some of Relius's longing must have showed on his face because the king turned to him with a smile.

"Jealous, Relius?" With no sign of embarrassment, or of jest, he brushed the former secretary's hair back and kissed him as well.

It was laughable, surely, but as the king left, Relius blinked the water from his eyes. The kiss had been gentle, and the king's eyes as he delivered it had not smiled.

I wish to point out that this DOES NOT specify WHERE Gen kisses Relius. On the cheek would make sense, in parallel with his kiss to Irene. On the forehead would make sense, since Gen brushes his hair aside first. But we do not actually KNOW, and it could actually be anywhere?? (Also not specified: precisely what Relius is longing for.)

Also, I'm just saying, he's explicitly described as a "royal favorite" in the sixth book and that term is often code for "someone the monarch is fucking."

I also talk about this fandom some in my Yuletide letter for this year.

I intend to read Moira's Pen when it comes out, so if you also read it and see anything there you want to incorporate into your story, that will be fine!

Source notes: this is undoubtedly the most likely-to-be-familiar of the sources I have requested, but just in case: this is a series of six (brilliant!) books by Megan Whalen Turner (with a seventh volume of collected short pieces just released).

Shane - Jack Schaefer

Shane/Joe Starrett/Marian Starrett

Request: I retired my own request for this after an excellent story was written for someone else in the 2010 Yuletide, and I even tried writing some myself a few Yuletides ago! But I'm still and always interested in more for these three who all love each other SO MUCH.

"They all love each other so much" is really the key for me here, no matter what the details of the story are. Missing scene from canon? Future fic where Shane comes back? AU fic where Shane stays in the first place? I am up for anything!

The very enthusiastic letter for my previous Yuletide request, including many of my favorite things from the book. (THESE THREEEE [drags hands down face, overcome])

Source notes: this is a short novel!

Morocco (1930)

Monsieur La Bessière/Légionnaire Tom Brown/Amy Jolly

Request: Usually I retire requests once a story has been written for them, and I did already get a lovely story for this in Yuletide last year!—but since I am expanding to non-Yuletide exchanges, I thought I would give this one another chance!

Still all about the emotional dynamic where Amy and Tom are trying their best to figure out Having Feelings for the first time, and Monsieur La Bessière genuinely loves Amy so much that he spends what was supposed to be the night before and the morning of their wedding doing everything he can to make it possible for Amy to find Tom and go with him instead. (The way Tom carves Amy's name in a heart on a table and then covers it up so she won't see it! The way Amy kisses Monsieur La Bessière's hand once she finally realizes she has to go with Tom!)

I don't think I really see them as ever becoming an equal triad (though if you do, I'd love to see it!) as opposed to some other shape—a V with Amy at the vertex, Monsieur La Bessière orbiting Tom and Amy's double star like a distant comet that occasionally approaches more closely (and perhaps also having other relationships of his own), whatever else you might come up with. It could be interesting to see what kind of friendship/relationship might eventually develop between Tom and La Bessière!

My previous Yuletide and Limited Theatrical Release letters for this request.

Source availability: It's a movie on DVD, and seems to be on archive.org but not available for streaming otherwise.

Gerald Poole and the Pirates - Johannes T. Evans

Gerald Poole/Orion Cedric Thwaites/Jack Wicks
Gerald Poole/The Highwaymen Who Kidnapped Him
Gerald Poole/Orion Cedric Thwaites/Jack Wicks/The Other Pirates on the Ship

Request: - Gerald Poole/Orion Cedric Thwaites/Jack Wicks - I love how the relationship between each set of characters is distinctly different and they all overlap, like how by the end Gerald and Wicks consider themselves married to each other, and not married to Thwaites, but Thwaites is definitely still with them. The delicious complexity! It's fun :-D

- Gerald Poole/Orion Cedric Thwaites/Jack Wicks/The Other Pirates on the Ship - Does it seem like Gerald would also find it fun to get fucked by some/any/all of the other pirates on the ship, in addition to his two? Because I think it seems like he might enjoy that. (Gerald Gets To Have As Much Sex As He Wants To Make Up For The Previous Voyage Challenge ;-))

- Gerald Poole/The Highwaymen Who Kidnapped Him - So what about that highwaymen backstory, huh? ("It's the fucking highwaymen all over again."—"That was years ago!"—"It was last year, and they still send you letters!") Would love to see past Gerald getting kidnapped by highwaymen and apparently making *them* all fall in love with him, or any of the letters they keep sending, or maybe he even encounters some of them again in the future?

A porny exploration of Gerald with Wicks and/or Thwaites (and/or others) would be fun! It could be interesting to see what it would be like for Thwaites et al. to see Gerald kidnapped by someone else now that Gerald is all sorted out as a member of the pirate ship rather than a captive. Gerald probably gets into all kinds of hilarious misadventures that don't involve getting kidnapped or apparent mortal peril at all; he just seems like that kind of chaotic guy. So, perhaps some other kind of hijinks? Or just a day in the life of the pirate ship!

Still and always fascinated by how Gerald, at a point in the story when he has apparently not had the opportunity to have sex or even masturbate for weeks or months, prefers to stay sleeping beside Wicks even if it means he doesn't get off than go literally anywhere else on the island where they're staying and take care of himself. That just says so many things about him and if you would like to explore any or all of them that would be fascinating.

Source availability: all online if you want it!
The original twitter thread (not required to read this if you also read the expanded prose version; just linking in case it's fun!)
Read the expanded story online! Link to Part One (there are four parts, about 40k words total).
You can also buy it as an ebook on Smashwords or Amazon.
Sequel short, called Sensory Deprivation (about 3k words).

Hello, Yuletide Writer!

One of the greatest pleasures of Yuletide for me has been getting wonderful surprises I couldn't even have thought of to ask for in the first place, so if you get a different idea from the specific suggestions in any of my requests, please go for it, and I'll be so interested to see what you come up with!

I have no squicks or triggers you need to avoid, and you can find a lot of my other likes and dislikes in previous years' letters if you want more than what I've said in each of my requests below.

Happy Yuletide!

Butter (Anthropomorphic)
Eastern U.S. Butter Stick
Western U.S. Butter Stick
(my Butter fandom promo post)

Request: So of course I nominated this because, as in classic slash fanfic tradition, the Eastern U.S. butter stick is longer and thinner, while the Western U.S. butter stick is shorter and thicker...

Are the butter sticks going to be truly anthropomorphic, i.e. human-shaped? Are they still actually going to be butter sticks? How do two butter sticks have sex anyway?

Feel free to get as meta with this as you like! Or as weird, or as silly :-D The AnthropomorFic authors of yuletide have produced some brilliant stuff, and I'm excited to see what people might come up with; it'll be fun!

Treats are welcome.

Do you maybe want to name the butter sticks variations on Elgin and Stubby/Stubbs based on the regional nicknames I just learned about from the video linked below?

Someone in the yuletide discord posted this link to a great video explaining why butter sticks are shaped differently in different regions of the U.S.! (Thank you, yuletide discord!)

A commenter to my promo post had some interesting ideas as well!

A couple other meta things I had on my mind while contemplating this fandom are:
A post I tragically cannot find again in the form of a medieval-esque instructional dialogue between a teacher and student on the topic of, when two people with penises are having sex it is somehow, invariably, a natural law that one of the penises will be longer and thinner and the other will be shorter and thicker.

The legendary Dancing Penises skit/cosplay that involved people costumed as Kirk's and Spock's penises, and "Kirk of course was a little shorter and thicker, Spock was taller and thinner—" because even decades ago this was already an established tradition in slash fanfiction!

(Someone in the yuletide discord said the phrase "long butter" made them think of "long pig" and thus "human...butter?" and I'm just saying, I did not have cannibalism in mind when I nominated this (..what even would constitute cannibalism among butter sticks, one wonders?) but hey, I liked Hannibal, so if anyone does have some wild cannibalism-inflected ideas for this, go for it, I'm up for it!)

The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Attolia | Irene
Eugenides (Queen's Thief)
Relius (Queen's Thief)

Request: Write me the relationships between these three characters: all the twisty complexity and the sincere love.

I have a longing for Gen/Irene/Relius threesome fic—I have a thesis that there is AT LEAST as much justification for Gen/Irene/Relius as there is for the more abundant Gen/Irene/Costis (which I definitely also see and understand!)—but if you are not so inclined, there is certainly plenty of complexity at work in these relationships with or without there being a threesome. (And of course, Relius has Teleus and his "many, many" other lovers too, for whatever part you may want them to play in the story!)

I'd love a closer look at any part of the path from Gen bringing Irene to visit Relius in the infirmary after his arrest, torture, and pardon, to Relius as an "unassailable" royal favorite of them both in the final book.

How are they all kind to each other? For instance, in canon, we've seen Attolia comforting Gen after a nightmare about her cutting off his hand—do Gen and Relius ever have a similarly fraught moment over their mutual (and arguably mutually inflicted) hand trauma, and what would that look like? (Is there hand kissing??)

Treats are welcome.

There's a certain distance in MWT's writing between the reader and the characters; there are things that are all the more compelling for having not been made perfectly clear, so I return to them again and again like a riddle. I don't think I've ever really understood Gen and Irene's relationship, for instance, though I find it fascinating and am 100% on board with it.

The centerpiece of my longing for Gen/Irene/Relius is this passage:

Eugenides looked from one silent face to another. "You must speak sometime." He brushed his wife's cheek with his hand and bent to kiss her softly on the cheek. Some of Relius's longing must have showed on his face because the king turned to him with a smile.

"Jealous, Relius?" With no sign of embarrassment, or of jest, he brushed the former secretary's hair back and kissed him as well.

It was laughable, surely, but as the king left, Relius blinked the water from his eyes. The kiss had been gentle, and the king's eyes as he delivered it had not smiled.

I wish to point out that this DOES NOT specify WHERE Gen kisses Relius (which reliably makes me go a bit feral). On the cheek would make sense, in parallel with his kiss to Irene. On the forehead would make sense, since Gen brushes his hair aside first. But we do not actually KNOW, and it could be almost anything! (Also not specified: precisely what Relius is longing for. Closeness with the queen would be the safe bet, but Gen's response doesn't make much sense in relation to that unless it's a joke, and it's not a joke.)

I intend to read Moira's Pen when it comes out, so if you also read it and see anything there you want to incorporate into your story, that will be fine!

The Bus - Paul Kirchner (Comics)
Worldbuilding (The Bus - Paul Kirchner)
(my fandom promo post for The Bus!)

Request: Explore this surreal world! "Worldbuilding" does not have to mean a grand scale—if you do have a grand theory unifying all the different strips that would be *fascinating*!—but you could equally well just expand upon a single strip among them all (or of course, somewhere in the middle, any selection of a subset that intrigues you!).

You are welcome to include/focus on the central character of the commuter, or any other character who appears in any of the strips (one of the Hieronymus-Bosch-esque creatures? the magical/indestructible old ladies who do things like fold the commuter up in her shopping bag so she can take the seat he's in, or leave the bus crashed behind her when it runs into her? any of the other human or non-human passengers, like the billboard figure who departs from her billboard on the bus?), or, of course, entirely original characters (or no characters at all?).

Or take any situation in or suggested by any strip and explore it further! What about those impossible landscapes seen through the bus windows? What does a destination of ELSEWHERE or ONWARD mean? (Is it possible this is a bus system through Fairyland?)

Or instead of basing your story on specifics from the strips, you could just use them as a jumping-off point into new territory. (What would other transit systems in this world look like, for instance?)

Whatever ideas you have, I'll be interested to see them!

Treats are welcome.

The second volume adds a meta layer, in case you'd find that fun to play with: "In 2012, interest in 'The Bus' suddenly revived. A new generation of fans demanded new strips. The old studio was reopened and plans were made to reassemble the original team. Sadly, Harvey P. Farquhar, the actor who played the commuter, was now 80 and unable to handle the demands of the role. Fortunately, his son, Harvey P. Farquhar Jr., an aspiring actor currently between roles, bore a close enough resemblance to his father to make an ideal replacement."

If you are interested in focusing on the character of the commuter, the author has some thoughts about him in the Postscript of the first volume that may spark interest: "As for the commuter, the dull-looking businessman, we learn very little about him. Who is he? How does he feel about the constant surprises sprung on him? Does he actually have an office to go to in the morning and a home to return to at night, or does he just live for the trips?"

La Fille du Diable | Devil's Daughter (1946)
Isabelle (La fille du diable | Devil's Daughter)
(my Devil's Daughter fandom promo post, including where you can buy the DVD!)

Request: I'm not sure how to give Isabelle happiness, but I'd love to see her unleashed!

It would be lovely to see her escaping her tiny town, becoming more powerful as a criminal mastermind, perhaps replacing/becoming Saget (Dread Pirate Roberts-style) or even working with him as her "inside man" in respectable society? It would also be interesting to see some exploration of her softer side (without losing her sharper edges)—the strong bond she has with Jacques (whether romantic or not), the kindness and even tenderness she shows the Tadpole and Jacques.

Treats are welcome.

I also requested this in two previous exchange letters.

Isabelle saves newspaper clippings about Saget and passionately expresses what he means to her: he's strong! he's brave! "For ten years all the police in Europe have been after him, he doesn't care! Nothing can stop him, nothing can touch him! He can't be caught!" It reminds me a lot of fandom and the ways people can engage with stories—how she sees what she needs in the story of him, whether or not it's really there in the man himself. She's devastated to learn that Saget has assumed an ordinary identity in her town, the nephew of a woman who sells fishing rods, and he has no intention of escaping back into his life of spectacular crime. He was probably the one thing she ever allowed herself to love that she thought was safely remote from ever being destroyed by the town she lived in—and then it destroyed him (or what she valued in him) too.

If you want to include Saget himself at all—I was thinking when re-watching the film that he seems to really enjoy some of the benefits and privileges that come with being seen as a respectable citizen (I can just tell the police what's so and they don't argue with me!), and perhaps he and Isabelle could somehow work together as she ascends in the crime world and he can function as an "inside man" in polite society (I think he'd also enjoy the chance to get back at the doctor who forced him into the position of Respected Eminent Citizen, whether the doctor knows of his resumed criminal activities or not).

Hello, Yuletide Writer!

One of the greatest pleasures of Yuletide for me has been getting wonderful surprises I couldn't even have thought of to ask for in the first place, so if you get a different idea from the specific suggestions in any of my requests, please go for it! I'll be so interested to see what you come up with. :-)

I have no squicks or triggers you need to avoid, and you can find a lot of my other likes and dislikes in previous years' letters if you want more than what I've said in each of my requests below.

Happy Yuletide!

Gerald Poole and the Pirates - Johannes T. Evans
Gerald Poole

Availability: online, see the links in my promo post for the main story in tweetfic and expanded prose form!

Request: Gerald Poole FINALLY GETS FUCKED was my first idea for a prompt after I finished reading the initial tweetfic, but now that the author has posted his own porny followup (the porny short is available here!) that seems a bit less, uh, urgent. However, a porny exploration of Gerald with Wicks and/or Thwaites (and/or others?) would still be most welcome.

So what about that HIGHWAYMEN backstory, huh? ("It's the fucking highwaymen all over again."—"That was years ago!"—"It was last year, and they still send you letters!") Would love to see past Gerald getting kidnapped by highwaymen and apparently making *them* all fall in love with him, or any of the letters they keep sending, or maybe he even encounters some of them again in the future?

It could be interesting to see what it would be like for Thwaites to see Gerald kidnapped by someone else now that Thwaites and Gerald are together.

Gerald probably gets into all kinds of hilarious misadventures that don't involve getting kidnapped or apparent mortal peril at all; he just seems like that kind of chaotic guy. So, perhaps some other kind of hijinks?

Or just any slice of life with them all on the pirate ship after the end of the story would be lovely!

More: Haha, I nominated all four characters because I love them all but then decided it would be simplest to just request Gerald, because if you write backstory before Gerald has met any of the others that's fine, and if you write a story where it makes sense to focus on a subset of them instead of all of them that's fine, but please know that I do love the other three characters as well, so if you were hoping to write them all that would be great!

I especially love the expanded character dynamics and backgrounds we get in the prose expansion, like how Gerald realizes he's feeling a bit jealous of the closeness Paul Cotton has with Thwaites, because Thwaites has something with Cotton and it's important even if it's not the same as what he's going to have with Gerald and/or Wicks. In general I love how the relationship between each set of characters is distinctly different and they all overlap, like how by the end Gerald and Wicks consider themselves married to each other, and not married to Thwaites, but Thwaites is definitely still with them. The delicious complexity! It's fun :-)

One of my favorite tweets from the tweetfic for the humor is this one, which I thought about quoting along with the others I included in my promo post, but decided not to because I wasn't sure how funny it would be out of context (as opposed to the highwaymen line, which is definitely funny in any context!):

"Poole, do you see this book in my lap? Do you think I am holding it for decoration?"

"I don't care if you kill me," says Gerald, "but it wouldn't be preux to kill Wicks, Captain, just for the crime of being next to me."

"I am reading it, in fact," says Thwaites.

One part that lives rent free in my head is this tweet and the following one (both quoted below):

He touches himself one night, when it seems every soul on the island is asleep, muffles his gasps into his shoulder, and Wicks reaches out and grasps his wrist.

"Wicks," Gerald whispers harshly, feeling drawn tight as a bowstring, so close he can taste it.

"Not next to me."

Gerald lets out a growl of fervent frustration and rolls over to go back to sleep.

Because I am just saying, if I found myself in Gerald's situation and hadn't been able to so much as masturbate in—possibly months?—in this situation I would probably be going literally anywhere else on the island to finish up, but Gerald. Even as highly sexed as Gerald is, he would rather stay here lying beside Wicks, even if it means he doesn't get off. Than go somewhere else away from him and take care of it. That says so many things about Gerald and if you would like to explore any or all of them that would be fascinating.

If any new part of the prose expansion is posted before yuletide goes live you can rest assured I'll read it! But you certainly don't need to feel you have to incorporate anything from it that may be new if you don't want to.

Morocco (1930)
Amy Jolly
Légionnaire Tom Brown
Monsieur La Bessière

Availability: The movie can be purchased on DVD and seems to be streaming at archive.org

Request: I admired how competent Tom and Amy both seemed at navigating spending time together when they both thought it didn't mean anything. But then they both seemed totally lost when things turned serious for both of them—so agonizingly unable to express their feelings or even identify them, much less act on them. Tom carves Amy's name in a heart on a table and then covers it up so she won't see it! Of all the childlike gestures of affection!—It could be fun to see them both continue to fumblingly discover the territory of love for the first time, learning in baby steps all the ways they can express their love for one another.

Or I'd also be interested in seeing more about what happens when Amy joins the group of other women who are also following their men in the legion, all the ways they doubtless support each other to make what they're doing possible.

Amy walks out into the desert after Tom carrying nothing but a scarf—I could almost see Bessière dropping in or sending care packages to whatever towns Amy and Tom end up stopping in to make sure they have what they need. Could he continue to have a presence in their lives as an important friend to both of them? (Could you see a way to their ending up in a poly situation, whether briefly or permanently?) Or if Monsieur La Bessière finds love with another person, what kind of person would that be?

More: I requested both this movie and the next one for another exchange this summer, so you can also look at that letter if you like! My fandom promo post for yuletide is also here, in case you'd like to see it.

I should have included in the request itself that I'm also fine with a story that focuses on just Tom and Amy, or one that focuses on Monsieur La Bessière—I meant to and it didn't make it in! If all three are included in the story and they're not of equal prominence, that's okay too.

Here's another one where it could be really interesting to explore the different nature of relationships between different people—especially if you write them in any form of poly relationship. I don't think I really see them as ever becoming an equal triad (though if you do, I'd be interested in seeing it!) as opposed to some other shape—a V with Amy at the vertex, Monsieur La Bessière orbiting Tom and Amy's double star like a distant comet that occasionally approaches more closely, whatever else you might come up with. It could be interesting to see what kind of friendship/relationship might one day develop between Tom and La Bessière!

I never would have guessed how much I'd come out of this movie loving Monsieur La Bessière! For much of the movie I thought he might be just a rich man who decided Amy Jolly should belong to him, and is willing enough to be nice to her now, but how long might that last. Imagine my delighted surprise when he overshot my expectations by behaving massively more graciously at every step of being thrown over than would be at all reasonable to expect, because he really does love her and want her to be happy. Unexpected MVP.

I do love Tom and Amy struggling to figure out Having Feelings for the first time, bless them. And that ending! We can tell just from the way the camera looks at the other women picking up their baggage to follow after the legion, even before Amy knows it, that she is going to have to join them to follow Tom. The way Amy kisses Monsieur La Bessière's hand once she finally realizes she has to go! So many feeeelings.

La Fille du Diable | Devil's Daughter (1946)
Isabelle (La fille du diable | Devil's Daughter)

Availability: I was luck enough to see it in a movie theater as part of a noir series, so I suppose that's theoretically possible? Otherwise it only appears to be available for purchase on DVD from this site dedicated to selling out-of print movies (which might seem potentially sketchy, but I can confirm results in getting the actual movie!). I found it streaming on archive.org but only in the original French, without English subtitles.

Request: The description I read before seeing this movie the first time was that it was about "a young girl masterminding a gang of provincial thugs. What makes the story stranger still is her idolizing of a gangster in hiding," which gave me some expectations, but the movie itself turned out to be rather different. Isabelle is more isolated and vulnerable than that; she can call a group of young men to meet with her to hear a plan she has, but she can't make them join in with her. Her father died in scandal and her mother in illness when she was young, and the whole town has decided she's an acceptable target (with a distinct implication that this includes sexual predation). She is furious with the whole world, and has good reason to be. She has some respect for the town doctor who treated her mother and wants to treat her own tuberculosis, but refuses to accept those treatments (and the gangster-in-hiding finds it easy enough to drive a wedge between them when he tries). She is spoken of as only enjoying the suffering of others, but she shows kindness to her only friend Jacques and the little boy "the Tadpole" (who are the only ones who do go with her for the plan she couldn't convince anyone else to join).

It's only in the last twenty minutes of the movie that her "idolizing" of the gangster makes it onto the screen, when the gangster himself (who has been in hiding in the town under an assumed identity) knocks over the place where she keeps her newspaper clippings about the gangster Saget and sees them. In the face of his mockery, she passionately tells him what Saget means to her—he's strong! he's brave! "For ten years all the police in Europe have been after him, he doesn't care! Nothing can stop him, nothing can touch him! He can't be caught!"—without knowing she's speaking to the man himself.

He asks if she loves Saget, and he probably means romantically, and maybe she does too, but I saw something that reminded me of fandom and some reasons people can love stories. She sees what she needs in her image of him, and what he means to her is really the meaning she brings to that image, whether or not the things she sees/admires/wants for herself are there in the actual man or not.

She's devastated to learn that Saget has assumed an ordinary identity in her town, the nephew of a woman who sells fishing rods, and he has no intention of escaping back into his life of spectacular crime. He was probably the one thing she ever allowed herself to love that she thought was safely remote from ever being destroyed by the town she lived in—and then it destroyed him (or what she valued in him) too.

In the film, she can't bear it. I'd like to see something different. I want to see Isabelle unleashed. Actually running a mastermind operation, or otherwise somehow getting what she wants (whatever that is?). Somehow escaping the terrible shitty town she lives in and doing literally anything else? I'm not sure how to ask for a happy ending for her—maybe, for Isabelle, it would be burning it all down on her way out. Maybe she becomes the Saget she wants to see in the world? (Maybe the real Saget was the people we became along the way!) It would also be interesting to see some exploration of her softer side (without losing her sharper edges)—the strong bond she has with Jacques (whether romantic or not), the kindness and even tenderness she shows the Tadpole and Jacques.

More: I requested both this movie and the previous one for another exchange this summer, so you can also look at that letter if you like!

So, what I put in the request already gives you some of the context/additional reactions to the source I usually try to put in my letter (if I hadn't been trying to finish my requests at the last minute perhaps I could have edited more and it would have wound up in my letter instead of my request!).

Um, there are so many other ideas you could explore. She has one of those complex "is it a romantic relationship or not" things with Jacques you could explore (and here is another one where I could potentially see her having a web of different relationships with different people somewhere down the line).

If you want to include Saget at all—I was thinking when re-watching the film that he seems to really enjoy some of the benefits and privileges that come with being seen as a respectable citizen (I can just tell the police what's so and they don't argue with me!), and perhaps he and Isabelle could somehow work together as she ascends in the crime world and he can function as an "inside man" in polite society (I think he'd also enjoy the chance to get back at the doctor who forced him into the position of Respected Eminent Citizen, whether the doctor knows of his resumed criminal activities or not).

A couple of random-ish observations I didn't know where to fit in otherwise—the plan of revenge she fails to enlist others to join, it's so heartbreakingly childish! As revenge for being slapped, she plans to slash tires and break windows and cut horses' leads. And at the end, when she's so disappointed her plan to denounce Saget to the police doesn't result in his glorious escape—part of why it certainly never occurred to her that this plan might fail is that it's basically a replay of when she sent one of her would-be henchmen to kill Saget and Saget effortlessly overcame him. She no doubt thought this would be the same, and that there was no force on earth she could call down against Saget that he wouldn't prevail against.

It's hard to know how to ask for Isabelle's illness to be handled. She refuses to take treatments for her tuberculosis, but at one point says she would be willing to if it meant she'd be able to live with Saget (live as Saget?). Would she even see being cured of tuberculosis as a happy ending, if it were to be achieved? Her feelings about her illness may be complex. Curing illnesses in fiction can be ablist—especially if done "miraculously" or otherwise too simply—and I feel her illness shouldn't simply vanish from the story. But there's probably a whole range of responses she could take to it and feelings she could have about it that would all be reasonable to depict. I leave it to your judgment.

Tomorrow I will probably think of something I meant to include and forgot! But it will be too late :-D I am sure you have plenty enough to work with here anyway. Happy Yuletide again!

I don't think I've ever read another book where the first half gave me such a completely different reading experience from the second half.

Before this book came out, I told my friend (who got me into reading C.S. Pacat in the first place, exactly ten years ago, when Captive Prince was still being posted chapter-by-chapter on livejournal): "I've realized how much I really am only interested in Dark Rise on the strength of having already read and loved Captive Prince. Nothing about the book's own description or marketing has pinged me as anything other than 'yet another chosen one good vs evil story.' If I were encountering it in the wild with no context, absolutely nothing about it would have grabbed me." The tagline I kept seeing, "The Dark will rise. Who will fall? Who will stand?" seemed totally generic. My friend and I agreed that there must be more to the books than the marketing materials made it seem—based on our knowledge of her other work, there couldn't not be. The description says it's a "thrilling story of friendship, deception, loyalty, and betrayal" and I know from Captive Prince how well Pacat can write those things, deception, betrayal, tension, surprises, so: the book must be going to surprise me.

Starting to read the book didn't go much better than my initial impressions. The only thing that really kept me going was meta knowledge I had from outside the book. The above, of course, but also, Pacat has talked about how, when she got the idea for these books, she knew she didn't have the skill to write them yet, so she wrote Captive Prince as "practice" books to prepare for writing these. I kept finding myself thinking, "This is the book that took more skill to write than Captive Prince? Really? Why?" I thought sometimes of how Audrey Niffenegger started writing The Time Traveler's Wife as a side project when she regarded The Three Incestuous Sisters as the main project she was working on, and wondered if this might also turn out to be a case where people prefer the "not-real" project to the "real" one.

Sometime during the first half I, I came across this tweet thread from the author, which I hadn't seen before, and the next linked tweet, which quotes Pacat:

"#DarkRise is my agonised love letter to these English pastoral fantasies that child-me loved - loved though they excluded me, loved though they told me and others that we could never be the hero....What happens when you grow up told that you are destined to be the villain? Will the story of the past play out again, or can you fight your fate and forge a new path? These are the questions #DarkRise wrestles with....And so I came to write #DarkRise, an act of love and agon, to show how the adventure might be if it were experienced from the other side. It has all of my yearning towards those heroic English tales, yet it has the way they hurt, too - you yearn for what you want but can’t have....What is it like to really find yourself in a battle of dark and light, when the roles start to destabilize? I want to explore these questions and I invite you to come with me to find out."
https://twitter.com/cspacat/status/1433974764394070021

"I want them to never look at villains the same way again."
https://twitter.com/TheBooktopian/status/1443062997782601731

These tweets both made the book seem far more intriguing to me than at least 90% of the actual marketing...and did not seem to resemble anything I had read so far. I didn't see anything in the first half of the book that looked like it was going to complicate the depiction of good vs evil very much at all. The Dark King seemed very straightforwardly evil; killing/enslaving humanity to rule the world sure is evil, so of course opposing him would be good. The book leaned hard into all of the Stewards looking "noble" to anyone who sees them—whatever the fuck that means (me, repeatedly: "Looking noble isn't a thing!")—and also blood/heredity as fate (for instance, a character says that a Steward-in-training undergoing the test to become a Steward proper won't falter because "his blood is strong.") Yes, Violet chooses to join the side of the Stewards instead of fighting on the side of the Dark King per her familial inheritance, but she still has her actual powers of extraordinary strength due to her "blood". And besides, someone learning for the first time what's true about the "good" side and immediately joining it doesn't terribly complicate the relationship of good and evil, either.

I totted all these things up and kept concluding: there must be more to it, then. There must. I'll keep going.

"She must not know what she is doing! No. I know what I am doing," one of the tweets says. She does. All of this is deliberate, and at pretty much exactly 50%, the entire reading experience changes.

The first half does deceive you. It shows you a surface, and then you see underneath. It sets up the pieces, then everything starts getting turned over. The first half is the long slow climb up the first hill of a roller coaster, and halfway through you crest the top of that hill, and everything after that is hurtling through all the rest of the ride's twists and turns.

50% is also where protagonist Will interacts with antagonist James in person for the first time, which is electrifying. The whole book comes alive when James is on the page in a way it hadn't done up to that point.

James. Who is James? To call him this book's Laurent would probably be a little reductive, but he is this book's blond, blue-eyed beauty, sharp-witted and sharp-tongued, apparently ruthless, a little shit, both intolerable and compelling. There's an intensity to their scenes together that's fascinating the first time around, and gains even deeper meaning with what you've learned by the end of the book. (In fact, there are some lines between them that were already pretty fraught the first time through that get SO MUCH MORE SO in retrospect that I think I'll do a separate spoiler-cut post discussing those in particular.)

I don't want to describe much of the second half of the book even generally, but I finished wanting to immediately read the book again (which I am about to, once I finish writing this review!) so I could see more of the layers at work this time. And if you had told me that while I was reading the first half... well, I would probably have added it to the list of reasons to keep reading rather than disbelieving you, but it certainly would have seemed unlikely at the time. I also wanted to immediately read the second book (which doesn't even have an announced release date yet!) because I have no doubt that the next two books will continue to reveal even more secrets in what I've already read.

Or: In Which, Having Played the Final Level of Beautiful Katamari Twice, I Develop a Hypothesis About How To Play the Next Time (And Type a Nearly Thousand-Word Post Instead of Trying It Out)

The conceit of this level is that you have to make the planet Uranus by rolling up items in whichever category the king asks you to—and the category changes; now he might ask you to roll up food, next he might ask you to roll up electronic gadgets, or plants, etc. Each of those items counts as one of the king's "memories," and the higher the number of memories you assemble, the better. (If that doesn't make sense, don't ask for more of an explanation, because there isn't much of one :-P)

Based on my first two times through, I have a hypothesis that I mean to test the next time through, which is: Despite the premise of the level, I don't think it actually matters which type of object you roll up during the category assignments. I think it is important that you roll up items during the category assignments, and not between them (when the king is either praising your work—a novel experience!—or reminiscing about meeting the Queen).

Here's my data so far.

My first time through I was mainly trying to get all the cousins and presents on the level (more characters to play as! and more fun things to have them wear!), and I barely noticed the memory counter and didn't pay much attention to it (I didn't really realize it was important). I did try to follow the king's instructions to roll up certain categories, but I found it very frustrating—at first I was too small to pick up most things that fit the category, and then once I left the starting areas I couldn't get back into them, so I knew I'd left tons of stuff that fit the categories not picked up. Some categories were fairly straightforward (food, plants), but others were more confusing—what qualifies as "cute"? And what on earth counts as electronic gadgets when the examples given are small things like clocks and you're already the size of a house? In addition, the king's dialogues for each assignment were very long—I clicked through at least a dozen dialogue popups for each category—and the categories repeated, so I had to go through the same long dialogues more than once! Fortunately, the king stops talking and giving category assignments once you hit 60 meters, so after that I enjoyed myself more. I ended up rolling up some 1900+ "memories" and got a score of 82 (my best first-time-through score on any level yet!).

I missed several of the cousins the first time through, so my second time through was mainly to pick them up. I paid less attention to which categories were being assigned, and started picking up anything just so I could get big enough to go to where the remaining cousins were—but I paid more attention to the memories count, and I noticed that it seemed to go up whether the items I was picking up fit the categories or not. While some categories recurred three or four times in my first playthrough, in my second it seemed like there were fewer category repetitions. And although I was asked to pick up Drinks my first time through, my second time through that category never appeared—I speculated, perhaps because I had already picked up enough drinks during other categories.

The memory count kept going up as long as I rolled things up while there was a category set—but it didn't go up after the previous category disappeared and before the next one was assigned. I learned that if I just let the king's dialogue stay on the screen for as long as it took for all the speech bubbles to go away automatically (instead of clicking to get through them faster), then the category assignment would last for the full duration of the speeches—instead of ending sooner and catching me off guard. This time through I got 2200-something memories, and a higher score of 86.

In looking online for how many "memories" can be collected overall (it seems at least 3,000), I found advice that to do the best at the level, you should stay as small as possible and be careful to only pick up the items the king asks you for, when he asks you for them. And perhaps I'm wrong and there's something to this idea—after all, that's much of what I did when I got a score as high as 82 on my first try.

But I don't think that's what it looks like based on what I've observed. I think it looks like you may need to pick up a certain number of items in each category, but it doesn't matter what the assigned category is when you do it.

(I also wondered about how much more complicated the coding would have to be to only count items picked up when that category was assigned, as opposed to counting items in each category overall, and whether it would have been able to fit, since this is still a game on physical media. But I don't have a good enough grasp of what would be involved to know if this was a factor.)

So, that's how I'm going to play my third time through: only roll up items while a category is assigned, but ignore what the category is; stop rolling and try to pick up nothing whenever a category disappears...and see what happens.

Edited to add update:
The third time I played, attempting the strategy above but not doing very well at stopping rolling as soon as the category assignment ended, I got 2300+ memories and a score of 87, one point higher than before. So: better, but not dramatically so.

My fourth time through, I got 3000+ memories and a perfect score of 100. And this time I did pay some closer attention to the category assignments, and I think my above hypothesis is wrong and it does matter whether you pick up items during the appropriate category. Picking up food items when the category assignment was Playtime, for instance, did not make the memory count go up.

But, what I now think is true is that which categories items fall into is not necessarily obvious. Some items may fall into more than one category—for instance, cups of tea should clearly count for both Drinks and Hot—so that may account for previous times when I didn't get a particular category assignment (if I had already picked up enough items in that category during other categories that also applied to the items). But also, sometimes what counts in a category just doesn't seem to make much sense. It can be hard to tell which particular items you're picking up are being counted if they're close together, but at one point I had all but cleared the indoor staircase and could clearly see that the only item I picked up when the memory count went up for the Playtime category was... a piece of airmail. (How does airmail qualify as playtime?)

So my new recommendation for playing this level would be: if you don't see anything you can pick up that obviously fits the current category, it pays to just try picking up random things and see if any of them count. (And still to let the king's dialogue run by itself to extend the time you have to pick things up in each category. That will minimize the chances of a category assignment ending "early," though it can still happen sometimes when you size up.)

I have added more notes to the fandoms I was going to add more notes to, and this letter is now complete!

Fandom: Crossover Fandom
Characters: group: Susan Vance (Bringing Up Baby) & None (North by Northwest)

Request: So, I watched Bringing Up Baby, and then some time later I watched North by Northwest... and at one point, when Cary Grant is trying to explain what happened to him on his impossible-to-explain night of being kidnapped by spies who attempted to stage his death by drunken car accident, he uses the *exact same tone of voice* he used in Bringing Up Baby when trying (again, impossibly) to explain "these aren't my clothes... I *lost* my clothes!"

And it occurred to me: what if the field of "making impossible-to-explain things happen around herself" that Susan Vance emanates was actually to a purpose?

What if Susan Vance was a spy?

As you can see, I didn't nominate any other characters; I don't care if a Cary Grant character is involved at all (or if so, which one it is), I'm just interested in seeing whatever direction this premise could go in. Nobody suspects her because they think she's just a scatterbrained heiress! What is her mission? (My roommate got pretty excited imagining the possibilities, like "what did she need to do with the leopard?" and "it would be nice if there was a reason the dinosaur skeleton had to be destroyed.") Setting, timeline: whatever you want!

More info: I'll be honest about where I'm coming from with Bringing Up Baby: for me, it's very successful as a comedy and very unsuccessful as a romance. I understand at least vaguely when Susan must fall in love with David (sometime before she's disappointed to learn he's engaged to someone else), but not why—and I have no idea when or why David is supposed to fall in love with Susan. (It was very gratifying when I showed the movie to my roommates and they yelled out "What?!" in the last scene when David suddenly, incomprehensibly, says he loves Susan and the day he spent with her was the best day in his whole life.) Leaving aside the purported love story, it's a wonderful worst-day-of-someone's-life comedy, which is something I can really love; the way the absurdities pile up and pay off is excellent. The crowning moment of triumph of Susan bringing in the leopard all by herself!

Fandom: Adam's Rib (1949)
Characters: group: Adam Bonner/Amanda Bonner (Adam's Rib)

Request: I spent the first portion of this movie thinking that this courtroom rivalry between husband and wife was probably some sort of well-established kink dynamic between them. (The way Amanda smiles in their bedroom when Adam finds out she'll be the lawyer opposite him on this case and tells her that he'll tear her into twelve pieces and feed her to the jury! Her flipping up her skirt to show him her petticoat under the table in the courtroom!) But by the time Amanda was crying and Adam was storming out of their home, I realized: oh shit. They don't have this already figured out at all. Maybe they already knew they got something out of competitiveness, but in this situation they have stumbled over some new thing that turns out to be too hot to handle!

So, uh, if you're into writing kink I'd love to see a story about them exploring this further, and getting to a point where they really figure out how to harness whatever it was about this situation that was so powerful for them both without hurting each other in the process. (Maybe they shouldn't actually be using the courtrooms of America to play out their fun with each other? Maybe they'll keep doing it anyway. :-P)

If that's not your thing, I'd also be interested in a post-movie story in general, or even something from earlier in their relationship. Like, did they get together in law school, and is that how they first found out they enjoy competing with each other? Or for a post movie story, I wonder about Amanda continuing with legal work to support women's rights. Her courtroom strategy in the movie doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense to me as a way to do this, but I'm sure someone must have been doing legal work around women's rights in an organized fashion in this time period. Perhaps she joins forces with them? (I could even see Adam looking into this, specifically so he can come home to Amanda and bitch about the weird stuff this group is doing, have you heard of them?—thereby introducing her to something he knows she'll be interested in working on. :-))

There is just something about a man in a movie getting what he wants by crying, even if it's feigned and he explains the trick to his wife later. (I love that he tells her! I wonder whether he understands that everyone else who cries isn't doing the same thing? That when Amanda cries in an earlier argument, it's not because she's choosing to, but because she's genuinely upset?)

More info: I can't explain to you why Adam crying to get what he wants at the end of this movie works for me so well and Mr. Morgan faking heart trouble at the end of Vivacious Lady to get what he wants so doesn't, it's just true!

Fandom: If I Had a Million (1932)
Characters: group: Mary Walker & John Glidden (If I Had a Million)
group: Mary Walker/John Glidden (If I Had a Million)
John Glidden (If I Had a Million)
Mary Walker (If I Had a Million)
None (If I Had a Million)

Request: I nominated and requested these two characters because I *particularly loved* them in the last part of the movie--how Mary has transformed her "old ladies' home" into a rollicking social club after getting her million dollars, and how John (always a very energetic man to be on his deathbed, I thought) seems to have found even more of a new lease on life in her company. Mary clearly has just as forceful a personality (and as little patience for fools) as John does, so it makes perfect sense that they'd get along so well! I'd love to read more about the further adventures of Mary and/or John (in either a romantic or platonic capacity).

It would also be cool to see the premise of a rich person choosing to give away all his wealth to random people before his death explored in a new way, with different characters and/or setting. For instance, would eight people randomly selected from the telephone directory of a major American city *really* have all been white? Does an IN SPACE AU seem fun? Go wild.

In my Yuletide request, I added that I'd also be interested if you'd like to explore the aftermath of one of the other stories in the movie--I didn't nominate characters from any other section of the movie, but that's an option that's open to you if you want it.

More info: I think what I really loved most about this movie was watching the unfolding of people's private desires into the beautiful daylight of possibility. Someone wants to smash everything in the shop, or go to sleep in the finest hotel room alone, or be able to smoke and play cards and pet cats and cook biscuits—and then they get to do it! With gusto! It was a delight to watch, for recipient after recipient.

Fandom: Vivacious Lady (1938)
Characters: group: Francey/Peter Morgan & Mrs. Morgan (Vivacious Lady)
group: Francey & Mrs. Morgan (Vivacious Lady)

Request: How thrilled I was when Francey went off back to the city with her new mother-in-law in tow! How disappointed I was when their husbands caught up with them on the train and they never made it to their new adventure. Something about the elder Mr. Morgan faking heart trouble to reconcile with his wife particularly stuck in my craw. Yes, she also has been faking heart trouble for years to manage him. Still: when *that's* your happy ending..! A lifetime of pretending serious ailments to manipulate each other, good grief.

So I'd love to see the ending unfold more like I'd imagined for a few brief shining moments it would! Francey and Mrs. Morgan make it to the city! Francey introduces the older woman to all the pleasures the city has to offer, and Mrs. Morgan enjoys it! Maybe they room together! Francey's husband can come along too (or not) if he likes (if you like)--he's all right. I'd just really have loved to see the elder Mrs. Morgan really getting to expand her horizons as she heads off on new adventures instead of getting closed back in to the same small world she's been in for years.

Fandom: Night of the Hunter (1955)
Characters: Ruby (Night of the Hunter)
group: Ruby & Rachel Cooper (Night of the Hunter)

Request: After Harry Powell manipulates Ruby into unknowingly putting the other two children at risk, I remember Rachel Cooper telling Ruby, "You were looking for love, Ruby, in the only foolish way you knew how. We all need love, Ruby... You're going to grow up to be a strong, fine woman and I'm gonna see to it that you do." and thinking: she's right. Ruby is going to be just fine. It's not he fault she fell victim to a man more evil than she knew anyone could be. So I'd like to see more of that: Ruby growing into a strong, fine woman.

More info: What a strange movie this is. I remember having no idea where it was going to go the first time I watched it; "the story is not shaped like anything you know," I described it afterwards.

I remember disliking the extent to which the story was framed as a moral struggle between Harry Powell and the boy child, with both the younger sister and their mother depicted as oblivious to or incapable of understanding the stakes and granted little scope to exercise their own agency.

That moment when Rachel Cooper starts singing along with Harry Powell, her own version of the hymn bright and strong where his has been filled with menace the whole movie long—it's like a wizard's duel, two powers that are equally great in opposite directions meeting on a battlefield only they can understand.

Fandom: La Fille du Diable | Devil's Daughter (1946)
Characters: Isabelle (La Fille du Diable)
group: Isabelle & Ludovic Mercier | Saget (La Fille du Diable)

Request: I remember reading the description of Isabelle as a "young girl masterminding a gang of provincial thugs" ahead of time and really looking forward to seeing that!--and then I remember realizing her position was actually more isolated and vulnerable than that. She can call a number of disreputable characters to meet with her, but she can't make them join in to a plan she proposes. The same description referred to "her idolizing of a gangster in hiding," and I remember how that reminded me of fandom in a way--how she sees what she needs in her image of him, and what he means to her is really the meaning she brings to that image, whether or not the things she sees/admires/wants for herself are there in the actual man or not.

I'd like to see Isabelle unleashed. Actually running a mastermind operation, or otherwise somehow getting what she wants--given that (if I recall correctly) she says she wouldn't want to be cured of the illness that's killing her, I don't even know how to ask for a happy ending for her. Maybe it would be burning it all down on her way out.

More info: I had hoped to be able to rewatch this movie to re-familiarize myself with the details and add more to this letter; however, the DVD I managed to find did not arrive as soon as I had hoped! (Anyway, since my requests have already gone out as a pinch-hit, I imagine you're probably not selecting my requests based on this movie anyway!)

Fandom: Morocco (1930)
Characters: group: Légionnaire Tom Brown/Mademoiselle Amy Jolly (Morocco)
group: Légionnaire Tom Brown/Mademoiselle Amy Jolly & Monsieur La Bessière (Morocco)
group: Légionnaire Tom Brown/Mademoiselle Amy Jolly/Monsieur La Bessière (Morocco)
group: Légionnaire Tom Brown & Monsieur La Bessière (Morocco)
group: Monsieur La Bessière/Original Character (Morocco)

Request: I watched this movie solely for Marlene Dietrich in a suit kissing a girl, and for all I knew going in that would turn out to be the highlight of the movie for me--I never would have guessed how much I'd come out of the movie loving Monsieur La Bessière! For much of the movie I thought he might be just a rich man who decided Amy Jolly should belong to him, and is willing enough to be nice to her now, but how long might that last. Imagine my delighted surprise when he overshot my expectations by behaving massively more graciously than would be reasonable to expect over and over again. When he suspects she might still love Tom, he gives her an opportunity to call off their wedding (which she doesn't take, because she doesn't know her own heart yet). When she leaves the celebration dinner the night before their wedding and accidentally destroys the necklace he gave her because she needs to discover whether Tom has been injured in fighting--when she's told Tom is hospitalized some distance away and decides she must go there--Bessière offers to drive her, and explains to the table of assembled guests it's because he loves her and wants her to be happy. He really means it. He even drives her to see Tom off before Tom marches away--and when Amy decides to follow Tom after all, she kisses Bessière's hand before she goes.

There are so many feelings here! Bessière loves Amy deeply--does that continue? Amy walks out into the desert after Tom carrying nothing but a scarf--I could almost see Bessière dropping in or sending care packages to whatever towns Amy and Tom end up stopping in to make sure they have what they need. Could he continue to have a presence in their lives as an important friend to both of them? (Could you see a way to their ending up as a threesome, whether briefly or permanently?) Or if Monsieur La Bessière finds love with another person, what kind of person would that be?

And Tom and Amy--I admired how coolly sophisticated competent they both seemed at navigating spending time together when they both thought it didn't mean anything. But then they both seemed totally lost when things turned serious for both of them--so agonizingly unable to express their feelings or even identify them, much less act on them. Tom carves Amy's name in a heart on a table and then covers it up so she won't see it! Of all the childlike gestures of affection!--It could be fun to see them both continue to fumblingly discover the territory of love for the first time, learning in baby steps all the ways they can express their love for one another.

Or I'd also be interested in seeing more about Amy joining the group of other women who are following their men in the legion, all the ways they doubtless support each other to make what they're doing possible.

Hello, Yuletide Writer!

One of the greatest pleasures of Yuletide for me has been getting wonderful things I couldn't even have thought of to ask for in the first place, so if you get a different idea from the specific suggestions in my requests below, please go for it! I'll be so interested to see what you come up with. :-)

I have no squicks or triggers you need to avoid, and you can find a lot of my other likes and dislikes in previous years' letters if you want more than what I've said in each of my requests below.

My requests this year are for three old (black-and-white) movies! In case you're considering branching out from the one you matched on, I've also included some description and availability notes below.

Happy Yuletide!

The Uninvited (1944)
Roderick Fitzgerald (The Uninvited 1944)
Pamela Fitzgerald (The Uninvited 1944)
Stella Meredith (The Uninvited 1944)
Dr. Scott (The Uninvited 1944)

Availability: Can be purchased on DVD; doesn't appear to be streaming anywhere.

Request: This may be the most good-natured, pleasant group of people ever to be afflicted by a haunting; no matter what eerie or dangerous event takes place, their spirits never stay down for long! I'd just love to spend more time with this group of characters, even something mundane like their all spending an evening together having dinner and playing games or something--I enjoyed the night they spent trying to stay awake to catch the ghost so much!

It could also be lots of fun to see them encounter other genre tropes and react to them--I'd be up for almost anything else supernatural or science-fictional. Vampires? Werewolves? Aliens? Something they think is one thing at first but turns out to be another? Some combination of things???

As for relationships, the movie leaves us with two couples clearly set up, which I'm happy to go with, though you don't have to if you have other ideas. I liked Roderick's and Stella's romance much better than I expected to given the age difference between them--I think because the movie successfully undercuts any idea that he might have the upper hand (such as with the sailing and seasickness scene!), and because Stella's well-being is so obviously the central concern of the other three characters throughout the movie. I do enjoy Dr Scott, whether romantically or platonically involved with Pamela. I could quite happily see them as two couples setting up housekeeping together in the cliff house, or with Dr Scott (and/or Pamela?) remaining nearby, or just spending time together as trial-tested and lifelong friends. So long as they continue to enjoy each other's company and treat each other well, I'll be pleased!

I saw this film in a double feature with the UK version of Gaslight, and from the description on the theater’s website, I thought I was more interested in the other film. I almost wasn’t even going to stay for this one, until I saw that Dodie Smith (best known either for I Capture the Castle or 101 Dalmatians, depending on the audience) was a screenwriter. And I wound up enjoying this film much more than the other one! (This has now happened enough times that I have learned my lesson: always stay for both films in a double feature, if at all possible! Because you just never know.)

I found spending time with the people in this film exactly as charming as you’d hope for from the writer of I Capture the Castle. I love the spirit (...I’d say no pun intended, except it kind of is ;-)) with which Pamela and Roderick tackle any project, from deciding to buy the cliffside house they’ve just discovered and fallen in love with, to figuring out just what’s going on with this strange house once they move in. When Dr. Scott joins them to stay up all night to try to investigate, it seems like the stuff of which lifelong friendships are made. And Stella is such a delight, and I love how much the movie is about her and centers her.

As I said in the request, it would be cool to see the team tackle something else supernatural (or science-fictional? or fantastical?), but I also thoroughly love them in mundane situations. A quiet night at home? Roderick and Pamela throw a party filled with friends of theirs who are no doubt as delightful as they are?

I thought it was kind of hilarious how you needed the actors to tell you that the upstairs room Roderick selects for his music room is a miserable room, because otherwise it looks gorgeous: huge windows overlooking the sea, exactly where you’d want to sit for hours to read and look out at the scenery. (I recently rewatched this with my roommates and was gratified when they too greeted the line "What a horrible room!" with disbelieving "What?"s.) You can definitely tell why the artist who previously inhabited the house selected the room for his studio! But, while pretty for us to look at, it’s miserable to actually be in; too cold and with an unpleasant feeling underneath that.

I am not overly familiar with the gothic genre, but I did see Crimson Peak, and I think they make an interesting double feature, if only for the ghostly presence who is not trying to scare or harm the young woman protagonist, but only wants the truth to be revealed. (Indeed, in my recent rewatch we did play these two as a double feature!) This does seem to have a lot of tropes of varying gothicity: an uncanny house! disturbing sounds in the night that vanish at dawn! a mysterious family history that must be revealed! a woman fleeing a house! being imprisoned in an asylum against one's will! Mortal Peril!

There are a couple of genuine jump scares and suspenseful moments, but when Stella was climbing the staircase toward the miserable room with the windows, alone in the dark house, I wasn’t afraid at all. I thought, she’s going to learn the truth. And there’s nothing to be frightened of in the truth.

The movie does play on “gypsy” stereotypes in describing an offscreen character, and while they are ultimately subverted and the injustice against that character is recognized, it's something you might want to be aware of beforehand if you decide to watch it.

If I Had a Million (1932)
John Glidden (If I Had a Million 1932)
Mary Walker (If I Had a Million 1932)

Availability: Available for purchase on DVD; doesn't appear to be streaming anywhere.

Request: I nominated and requested these two characters because I *particularly loved* them in the last part of the movie--how Mary has transformed her "old ladies' home" into a rollicking social club, and how John (always a very energetic man to be on his deathbed, I thought) seems to have found even more of a new lease on life in her company. Mary clearly has just as forceful a personality (and as little patience for fools) as John does, so it makes perfect sense that they'd get along so well! I'd love to read more about the further adventures of Mary, with or without John (in either a romantic or platonic capacity).

But you can also take both these character requests as optional--if you'd rather explore the aftermath of one of the other stories instead, go for it! Or you could explore the same basic premise played out in a different way (for instance, would eight people randomly selected from the telephone directory of a major American city *really* have all been white?). Does an IN SPACE AU seem fun? Have a blast.

The premise: a fabulously wealthy and successful magnate who is told he is going to die soon does not want to leave his fortune to any of his relatives—he thinks that all of his family and everyone at his company are drips. When he’s told that if he tries to direct his money elsewhere, the will is likely to be contested and his wishes not actually carried out, he resolves to give his money away while he’s still alive, then! And opens up a telephone directory and flips through the pages, flicking ink drops until he has selected a name on each of eight pages: each name is a person who will get one of his eight million dollars.

Sidenote: John Glidden is the most energetic man on his deathbed I’ve ever seen, and I was not at all surprised that he whirled away with a new lease on life in the final reel. Also, I’m sure that the contrast between himself and those we see working in his business was intended for comedic effect, but realistically speaking I’m completely unable to see how he could have built multiple fabulously successful companies if the people he hires are all unable to make decisions without him. Seriously, in the opening scene we see an employee telling someone that it’s impossible to make a decision in this matter without Mr. Glidden’s input, and he’s expected to die soon. Well, and how do you expect to continue after his death, then?! A strongly built institution should be able to survive after its founder’s death much more smoothly than that. Anyway.

What follows are separate stories for each of the eight recipients of a million dollars, some quite short, others more elaborate, most of them funny, but at least a couple that are genuinely tragic, such as the man who has been sentenced to execution that day, and is convinced he only lost his appeal because he had no money to afford a good lawyer. When Mr. Glidden arrives at the prison to deliver the check, the warden urges him to pass it to the condemned man’s wife (soon to be widow), and not even tell the man himself about it. But Glidden insists on delivering it in person, and the condemned man is convinced that this can now repair the fault that led to his doom. If the only problem was that he didn’t have any money, see, and now he has money—well, surely that means the problem is solved?!

He had been prepared to go to his death with a kind of solemn resignation, but now is instead dragged to it, screaming about the injustice. All your money can’t fix this man’s real problem, Mr. Glidden, and no doubt the prison warden was right that the condemned man would have been happier if he had gone to his death without ever learning of the money.

A couple of recipients are hoist on their own petard—a check forger, known as such to all the banks in the city, finds himself unable to cash or deposit the check because no one will believe, coming from him, that it’s real. Denied the face value of the check, he keeps trying to find a way to trade it for only a portion of the value—less and less after each offer's refusal—and at last is willing to accept only a night in a cot at a flophouse in exchange for the entire thing. He doesn't even get that, though: the proprietor calls the police to pick him up, and burns the check as an obvious ridiculous fake.

Another recipient—cannily noticing the date the check is delivered (in person, as they all are) is April 1—decides the check is fake to begin with, and tries to cheat a vendor by trading it for cash—ten dollars, he tells the shortsighted vendor it’s worth—so he can take the vendor’s daughter on a date to the carnival. He and his pals only learn of their mistake when they see father and daughter alight from a fancy car in finery and furs—the bad trade they thought they made actually went in the opposite direction!

One is almost too short to mention (a man who works in an office goes up through successive layers of management until he blows a raspberry at the head of the company), but another short one is one of my favorites (I’m saving my favorites for last, apparently). John finds a young woman to deliver a check to in a bar, and she assumes he is trying to hire her as a prostitute. This is how he learns of her profession, and he is flustered, and anxious to correct the misunderstanding, but is otherwise not judgmental of her at all, and neither is the film (ah, the joys of pre-Hays-Code films!). After he successfully explains the situation and gives her the check, she endures for a time the unpleasant company of her boyfriend or client, until she loses patience and leaves for a hotel, asks for their nicest room, takes off most of her (probably uncomfortable) clothes, and takes the second pillow from the elaborate bed and throws it in the closet. The single remaining pillow she centers at the head of the bed, and goes to sleep in luxurious solitude. (There are two moments in this film where the number of pillows on a bed has significance—later, in the story with Mary Walker, one of her fellow inhabitants of the retirement home hoards an extra pillow from another bed so that she can pretend her husband is still with her and using it.)

I understand that the car-driving sequence may be the most famous/best-remembered. I did enjoy it; I loved the characters of the woman who receives the check and her husband, and their happy marriage; I enjoyed the conversation between the woman and an old friend from their vaudeville performance days at the beginning of the story (including the sly bit of misdirection where the woman says that, now that she's married, there's only one thing she lacks to be happy, and that's on its way—her old friend looks not at all thrilled at the prospect of having to congratulate her for a pregnancy, and I love that her forthcoming joy in fact turns out to be a car). Her use of the money to buy a fleet of sturdy cars and hire drivers to, at her direction, run badly-behaved "road hogs" off the road is exactly the kind of thorough working-out of a premise that I love in comedy—though their own driving behavior is definitely no better than anything they're driving others off the road for! (And it's a good thing this is a comedy, or people in the story would undoubtedly have been seriously injured as a result of all the smash-ups!).

I loved the first story for being a thorough working-out of a premise as well. This recipient is a man who is unhappy at work and at home; at work, he has been moved from the bookkeeping department of a china shop to the sales floor, at a higher rate of pay—less the cost of any breakages, of which there always are some, due to his nervousness. This means a lower actual rate of pay, but unfortunately there is no position in the bookkeeping department he can go back to—he must continue in the salesroom position and try to make it work, or else lose his position entirely. And at home, his wife (none too happy about the effective pay cut either!) nags him.

He initially takes John Glidden for a bill collector and offers him some nervous explanations, before grasping the true nature of the situation; when next we see him, he is magnificently dressed, with a pet rabbit on a ribbon (evidently a personal passion of his), and fabulously late to work—where he proceeds to vengefully turn the shop's transactional logic of paying for breakages back on it and smashes up everything in the shop with the greatest glee!

The final story, with Mary Walker, is magnificent. She is an unhappy inhabitant of a women’s retirement home, run by a woman who is all too happy to impose her "Christian" virtues on the residents (no smoking! no playing cards!) but is callously uncaring when a new resident objects to the idea of changing clothes in a room full of other women on the grounds of modesty. She is cruel in many ways, and when she is on the point of bluntly reminding the lady with the extra pillow that her husband is dead, Mary slaps her hand over her mouth and drags her backward out of the room to yell at her in her own office. John Glidden finds her there, and hesitantly interrupts her rant (he would clearly be delighted to listen to her yell all day long) only because he hopes the news of the check he has for her will improve her day.

Oh, does it. The residents have not been allowed to do anything that brings them joy, from the "illicit" pleasures previously mentioned to having cats or even just cooking, but when they complain the woman in charge reminds them they are free to leave at any time, and they all know they have nowhere else to go—no family that would welcome them to stay, no other resources to fall back on. Mary’s million changes all that, and the retirement home is transformed into a social club, with all the pleasures denied to them before. Cats everywhere! Tables filled with card games! Smoke fills the room! Music! Dancing! Mixed company! And the ladies cook for themselves, as they’ve been doing all their lives, and enforce the former staff sitting quietly in rocking chairs and not doing anything, for a change! John Glidden whirls out of his office in the last scene to join them.

I can definitely see why John and Mary hit it off so well. He complained voluminously at the beginning of the film about being surrounded by spineless people, and Mary is the first person in the film who’s as forceful a personality as he is. They go beautifully together, and I hope they’ll be very happy (in whatever capacity they spend time together).

And I think what I really loved most about this movie was watching the unfolding of people's private desires into the beautiful daylight of possibility. Someone wants to smash everything in the ship, or go to sleep in the finest hotel room alone, or be able to smoke and play cards and pet cats and cook biscuits—and then they get to do it! With gusto! It was a delight to watch, for recipient after recipient.

Adam's Rib (1949)
Adam Bonner (Adam's Rib)
Amanda Bonner (Adam's Rib)

Availability:: Can be purchased on DVD and can be bought or rented streaming from several vendors, at least in the U.S.

Request: I spent the first portion of this movie thinking that this courtroom rivalry between husband and wife was probably some sort of well-established kink dynamic between them. (The way Amanda smiles in their bedroom when Adam finds out she'll be the lawyer opposite him on this case and tells her that he'll tear her into twelve pieces and feed her to the jury! Her flipping up her skirt to show him her petticoat under the table in the courtroom!) But by the time Amanda was crying and Adam was storming out of their home, I realized: oh shit. They don't have this already figured out at all. Maybe they already knew they got something out of competitiveness, but in this situation they have stumbled over some new thing that turns out to be too hot to handle!

So, uh, if you're into writing kink I'd love to see a story about them exploring this further, and getting to a point where they really figure out how to harness whatever it was about this situation that was so powerful for them both without hurting each other in the process. (Maybe they shouldn't actually be using the courtrooms of America to play out their fun with each other? Maybe they'll keep doing it anyway. :-P)

If that's not your thing, I'd also be interested in a post-movie story in general, or even something from earlier in their relationship. Like, did they get together in law school, and is that how they first found out they enjoy competing with each other? Or for a post movie story, I wonder about Amanda continuing with legal work to support women's rights. Her courtroom strategy in the movie doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense to me as a way to do this, but I'm sure someone must have been doing legal work around women's rights in an organized fashion in this time period. Perhaps she joins forces with them? (I could even see Adam looking into this, specifically so he can come home to Amanda and bitch about the weird stuff this group is doing, have you heard of them?—thereby introducing her to something he knows she'll be interested in working on. :-))

I love the clear and genuine affection in Adam's and Amanda's marriage—they know each other well and love each other so much. I thought it was hilarious when their neighbor kept trying to seduce Amanda at a time when Amanda could talk and think of nothing but her marriage and her husband! He didn't even realize what a non-entity he was in this situation :-P

About the ending, there is just something that gets me about a man in a movie getting what he wants by crying, even if it's feigned and he explains the trick to his wife later. (I love that he tells her! I wonder if he properly understands that everyone else who cries isn't doing the same thing? That when Amanda cries in an earlier argument, it's not because she's choosing to, but because she's genuinely upset?)

Hello! This letter has stayed the same all week so far since I completed my sign-up, but now I've finally come back and updated it with at least a little more information for all my fandoms! I hope you may find it helpful.

I love yuletide, and one of the things I love is getting wonderful things I couldn't have even expected or asked for, so please discard anything in this that may be unhelpful (and know that I have no triggers or squicks you need to avoid).

The Brothers Sinister Series - Courtney Milan
Frederica "Freddy" Barton

Request: Freddy Barton, recluse and secret adventure novelist. We see Freddy only through other people's point of view in the series, and I'd love to see her more directly. I love the way she finds to expand her world to the entire globe through her novels, even while she struggles with not being able to step outside her home in her physical life. (Shades of people today finding lifelines out of various unpleasant circumstances over the internet?) I'm interested in seeing anything you want to write about Freddy as a writer and as a person--even if it's just mundane details about her writing process :-P

Since both this and my Brothers Sinister request concern women whose lives were cruelly limited by circumstance, but who pushed against those limitations how they could, if you can see your way to some kind of crossover, that would be welcomed with interest.

A note on the potential crossover between this and the next fandom: timeline, what timeline? :-P At least we know that Freddy dies in The Heiress Effect in 1867, but I have been completely unable to figure out when The Prisoner of Zenda is supposed to take place—when it was published, easy enough, but how long after the events of the story is Rassendyl supposed to have written it..? Which is to say, if you do this, do absolutely whatever you want with the timeline. I see no obvious way for Freddy and Ma Hentzau to meet, but perhaps Ma Hentzau likes Freddy's novels? I'd be interested to see whatever you come up with! (And of course, no crossover is in fact necessary.)

Notes about the fandom source in case you are considering another fandom than the one you matched on: this character appears in the novella The Governess Affair and the novel The Heiress Effect in this romance series, and is no longer alive but is mentioned several times in The Suffragette Scandal.

The Henchmen of Zenda - K. J. Charles
Rupert Hentzau's mother (Henchman of Zenda)

Request: Rupert Hentzau's mother exists only in one glorious paragraph of this delightful book (copied below, along with some brief introduction), and now I want to know all the things about her. I love her so much: her defiance, her strength and determination, her great love of life and the world and her son. Obviously an AU where she doesn't die as in canon would be extremely relevant to my interests! But I'd also love a canon-compliant story that fleshes out her too-brief period of freedom, or anything else you like. (Is there a storyline or universe where she gets to act on a scale that's truly as grand as her spirit?).

Since both this and my Brothers Sinister request concern women whose lives were cruelly limited by circumstance, but who pushed against those limitations how they could, if you can see your way to some kind of crossover, that would be welcomed with interest.

Notes on the fandom source: this is a single novel written by the ever-delightful KJ Charles as an alternate retelling/the other side of the story/"this is the real story" of the novel The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. It's designed to be enjoyable and comprehensible without having read The Prisoner of Zenda first, but reading them back-to-back really makes you appreciate how much better every single female character is in Charles' version!

I freaked out about this book on tumblr a bit while I was reading it, and you can find that chain of posts here.

"All the world presumes it. Rupert Hentzau flaunted his mistresses in his mother’s house. Drove her to her grave with a broken heart. It is a damned insult."

I scarcely knew what to make of this. "Given the life you intend to live, you will hear a great deal worse insults, and probably deserve them all."

"Not an insult to me. To her."

"That she died of a broken heart?" I asked, somewhat confused.

"She died of a disease of the lungs," Hentzau said. "She was married off to my father aged seventeen, when he was forty. He was old-fashioned, which is to say a brute. He circumscribed her life to nothing more than church, nursery, and drawing room, and would not let me go to school. We were all to live in his house forever, the shutters half-closed, no light, no air, puppets in his domestic dollhouse. She told me stories, though. She bought me books and hid them; she engaged tutors with imagination; she insisted I should learn to ride and secretly paid my instructors to teach me how to use a sword. I was seventeen when my father died of an apoplexy, and I thought we would both be free at last, but she was already ailing by then. It took her three years to die, and in all that time, she begged me to live for us both. She wanted the house filled with pleasure; she asked me to introduce my mistresses, and laughed at their stories, and made me promise not to marry early—as if I had not had quite enough of the domestic hearth—and she lived for tales of the life she had never been permitted to have. Broken heart, indeed. My father was the one who crushed her, not I, except that she would not be crushed. She refused a priest when she died, you know. She told me she’d had enough of God for an eternity, and laughed till she coughed blood."

Babette's Feast (1987)
Babette Hersant (Babette's Feast 1987)

Request: There's so much I'd love to discover about Babette. It seems she never seriously considered returning to Paris at all after winning the lottery (and given that she'd be returning to a city where her family was murdered, that makes perfect sense), but I'm not sure I completely understand her reasons for choosing to stay in the village with the sisters she works for. I keep turning possibilities over in my mind like turning a geode this way and that so that different facets catch the light. Clearly she loves the sisters and is loyal to them, but it's equally clear that she hungers to work at a level that she will likely never have the opportunity to do again after this, if she continues to stay. If she were offered a job more in line with her skills, say as a chef for a wealthy person, would she take it? Does she view staying in the village as a sacrifice worth making in exchange for the kindness she found there? I can't see far enough into her mind to know which of these things is most important to her, and I'd love to see your answer.

(And this is just an idea I'm throwing out--in absolutely no way required--but given that Good Omens has eaten my brain this year, I just thought I'd mention that if you happen to have any ideas involving a certain foodie angel in any way, I'd certainly be interesting in seeing what you might do with that. :-))

I rewatched this movie this summer for the first time in years, at a local dine-in movie theater that served an accompanying dinner as a special event (at least an attempt at a version of three of her courses, even if they weren't the same), and it was a magical experience that reminded me all over again of how beautiful this movie is. I have meant to write up the experience and my reactions at greater length ever since, but haven't managed it yet (and it would probably be unfair for me to try to do it after this, at least during yuletide, when I wasn't able to do it in time for this letter!). I was in tears by the end, and full of joy, and for all the talk of faith in the movie it also struck me as very humanist, with its love for the world and its physical realities and pleasures and the ways people actually are. (It made me want to reread Terry Pratchett! one of the most humanist authors I know—which is perhaps also what led to the first inkling of the idea of a possible crossover with Good Omens.) I had completely forgotten all the backstory of the sisters, and even that Babette had come to their village as a refugee after her family was killed. But I remembered her having been the chef at the famous fancy restaurant—and I remembered her explaining that the cost of a dinner at that restaurant was exactly the amount of her lottery winnings, that she had spent them all on one glorious night. (When I was on the fence about whether to go to see it at the theater, since the ticket price including the meal was significant—thinking of this line was what made me decide to go.)

And oh, what a gift that the one sister's former suitor accompanied his aunt to the meal! It's a miracle of its own to have one person at the table who previously ate at her restaurant, who can truly recognize and appreciate her achievement, and who can enjoy it and express his pleasure without being bound by the villagers' attempted vow of silence. It surprised me a bit that, as far as we see in the movie, he never spoke to Babette—she obviously knew he was appreciating the meal, but I wonder what they would have said to each other.

Source notes: this is a movie that's available for purchase on DVD and streaming.

Hustlers (2019)
Ramona Vega (Hustlers)
Destiny (Hustlers)

Request: I have so many ideas for possible stories, any one of which I'd be delighted to see! Most obviously and directly: what happens when Destiny contacts Ramona again after the end of the movie!? What about the alternate universe Ramona imagines where they knew each other when they were younger--how would things turn out differently? Their daughters are so centrally important to both of them--tell me something about their daughters as they're continuing to grow up?

This movie is something like an R-rated Leverage might be, but it's more "But then there were Actual Consequences" than Leverage tends to be. If you're familiar with Leverage, I'd be interested in a more Leverage-y take on the Hustlers story--whether as an actual Leverage crossover or just with the team somehow having more Leverage-level skills among themselves--which would have allowed them to find/vet targets and truly make sure they weren't targeting anyone who couldn't afford the losses (and possibly not get caught?).

They just love each other SO MUCH even when they're hurting each other, and I want to see more of that love. There is such strong femslashy, sisterly, found-family, and arguably even motherly (with the way Ramona takes Destiny under her wing) energy between these two, and I would be delighted for you to explore any or all of these dynamics to as full an extent as you wish to!

Some parts of the movie that meant the most to me:
- When Destiny first sees Ramona. This is shot in classic "birth of a crush" style, with such strong "do I want you or do I want to be you?" energy on Destiny's part.
- And ONE SCENE LATER they are CUDDLING IN THE SAME FUR COAT :-D
- How much Destiny and her grandmother love each other and take care of each other.
- How much the found family of Destiny, Ramona, and the rest of the team and their families love each other and take care of each other! The Christmas scene! How they stop introducing each other as co-workers and start introducing each other as sisters and it's not a new line, it's just the truth.
- Destiny telling Ramona she has to stop taking in strays, but oh honey, don't you realize that's the same impulse that led Ramona to take you under her wing in the first place?
- Destiny after that horrible night, still in her sexy work clothes, blood visible on her shirt, like a visual representation of losing control of her life, taking her daughter to school (no doubt the nice, suburban school she probably picked specifically so that her daughter could have the best possible start), absolutely refusing to show any shame in front of the other adults at the school—at least, while her daughter is with her on the way in.
- The scene outside the police station. Ramona is so furious with Destiny for taking the deal she was offered, but she understands being willing to do anything for the sake of her daughter, because how could she not. (This is the scene I was thinking of most when I said "they love each other so much even when they're hurting each other" in my prompt.)
- That one moment we get to see of Ramona's interview, and there's obviously so much more, but that's all we get to see.

Source notes: a recently released movie that may or may not still be in theaters, depending on where you are; it will apparently be released streaming November 26 and on DVD December 10

Sweeney Todd - Sondheim/Wheeler
Johanna Barker
Anthony Hope

Request: I love stories about people trying to be good to each other and take care of each other after terrible things have happened to them, and I'd love to see that with these two. While we don't know much of Anthony's background, what we know of Johanna's certainly makes it seem plausible that she may have the more traumatic background, of the two of them--still, I don't think I'd like a story with a dynamic of Anthony being the Normal Person who's here to Make Johanna Better--so feel free to invent any kind of complementary backstory for him you like. (I'm actually kind of fond of the idea that he gets depressed, for instance--and his positive outlook is a practiced defense against it. This isn't required, though; I only mention it in case the idea grabs you, too!)

Yuletide nominations were very kind to me this year! Thanks to other people's nominations, I got to both revive this request (previously requested in 2015—2015 yuletide letter here in case you're interested) and request the next fandom, which I'd previously considered but never actually been able to do!

Source notes: a musical play with an audio cast recording and DVD of the play available (and, I guess, there's the movie too :-P).

Corpse Bride (2005)
Victor Van Dort
Victoria Everglot
Emily (Corpse Bride)

Request: I distinctly remember the point in watching this movie where it looked like Victor and Victoria might both be killed, and thinking: if he'll be dead, and she'll be dead... and they barely knew each other before, and would have had to start from near-zero getting to know each other once they were married anyway... and Emily is already dead... what I mean is, I saw some really beautiful potential for a "working out how to get along in a threesome relationship in the underworld" story, and I'd love it if you could tell me that story now. :-)

I didn't get a chance to rewatch this before making my request (though I plan to before stories are revealed, just in case!), so I don't have command of the details to elaborate any further for the request or the letter, just—I just love threesomes so much, and I couldn't pass up the chance to request it for these characters! (Uh, sorry if you signed up for this not wanting to write a threesome? I usually do try to provide alternate prompt options, but in this case I'm afraid I don't have any! I do also have five other fandoms you could perhaps choose from as a backup, though? :-D)

Source notes: a movie available for purchase in the usual ways.

And Happy Yuletide!

I started working on these stories after I saw Hadestown at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2016, and... here they are, posted just in time for me to go back to New York to see Hadestown on Broadway, nearly three years later. :-P I'm a slow mover!

These are also the first fanfics I have posted outside the Yuletide umbrella—everything else I have up on AO3 was either a Yuletide assignment, or a treat or New Year's resolution for another Yuletide participant. I hope they will only be the first of more to come. :-)

I've got a pocketful of change (1177 words) by Age or Wizardry
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hadestown - Mitchell
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Eurydice/Orpheus (Hadestown)
Characters: Eurydice (Hadestown), Orpheus (Hadestown)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Happy Ending, Post-Canon
Series: Part 1 of Diptych (Old-Fashioned Hat)
Summary:

"Summer went the way of spring
winter's waiting in the wings
and we haven't saved anything
but that's all right

'cause we already paid the rent
there's still some money we haven't spent
go put on something different
we're going out tonight"

from "Old-Fashioned Hat" by Anaïs Mitchell

And I don't want to go home yet (769 words) by Age or Wizardry
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hadestown - Mitchell
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Eurydice/Orpheus (Hadestown)
Characters: Eurydice (Hadestown), Orpheus (Hadestown)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Canon, Angst
Series: Part 2 of Diptych (Old-Fashioned Hat)
Summary:

It's a sad song; it's a tragedy.

Current Mood: accomplished

Hello, Yuletide Writer!

One of the greatest pleasures of Yuletide for me has been getting wonderful things I couldn't have even imagined to ask for in the first place, so if you get a different idea from the specific suggestions in my requests below, please go for it! I'll be so interested to see what you come up with. :-)

I have no squicks or triggers you need to avoid, and you can find a lot of my likes and dislikes in previous letters if you want more than what I've said about what I like in each fandom below. I have come to realize how important it is to me for characters in romantic relationships to act like they like each other, but I don't think that should be a problem or a surprise with the fandoms I've picked.

And finally, I don't just talk about what I like in each movie below, but also give some information as though you may not have seen them, in case you're considering branching out and writing a different movie than you were assigned or volunteered for (as I didn't see anyone offering any of these fandoms in the final signup summary, I expect I may have been sent to the pinch hit list straight off!).

Fandom: The Uninvited (1944)
Characters: Roderick Fitzgerald Pamela Fitzgerald (The Uninvited (1944)) Stella Meredith Dr. Scott (The Uninvited (1944))
Request: This may be the most good-natured, pleasant group of people ever to encounter a haunting; no matter what eerie or dangerous event takes place, their spirits never stay down for long! I'd just love to spend more time with this group of characters, even something mundane like their all spending an evening together having dinner and playing games or something--I enjoyed the night they spent trying to stay awake to catch the ghost so much!

It could also be lots of fun to see them encounter other genre tropes and react to them--I'd be up for almost anything else supernatural or science-fictional. Vampires? Werewolves? Aliens? Something they think is one thing at first but turns out to be another? Some combination of things???

As for relationships, the movie leaves us with two couples clearly set up, which I'm happy to go with, though you don't have to if you have other ideas. I liked Roderick's and Stella's romance much better than I expected to given the age difference between them--I think because the movie successfully undercuts any idea that he might have the upper hand (such as with the sailing and seasickness scene!), and because Stella's well-being is so obviously prioritized by all three of these characters throughout the movie. I do enjoy Dr Scott, whether romantically or platonically involved with Pamela. I could quite happily see them as two couples setting up housekeeping together in the cliff house, or with Dr Scott (and/or Pamela?) remaining nearby, or just spending time together as trial-tested and lifelong friends. So long as they continue to enjoy each other's company and treat each other well, I'll be pleased!

More: I saw this film in a double feature with the UK version of Gaslight, and from the description on the theater’s website, I thought I was more interested in the other film. I almost wasn’t even going to stay for this one, until I saw that Dodie Smith (best known either for I Capture the Castle or 101 Dalmatians, depending on the audience) was a screenwriter. And I wound up enjoying this film much more than the other one! (This has now happened enough times that I have learned my lesson: always stay for both films in a double feature, if at all possible! Because you just never know.)

I found spending time with the people in this film exactly as charming as you’d hope for from the writer of I Capture the Castle (and something she didn’t quite recapture, at least for me, in the other two of her novels I’ve tried so far). I love the spirit (...I’d say no pun intended, except it kind of is ;-)) with which Pamela and Roderick tackle any project, from deciding to buy the cliffside house they’ve just discovered and fallen in love with, to figuring out just what’s going on with this strange house once they move in. When Dr Scott joins them to stay up all night to try to investigate, it seems like the stuff of which lifelong friendships are made. And Stella is such a delight, and I love how much the movie is about her and centers her.

As I said in the request, it would be cool to see the team tackle something else supernatural (or science-fictional? or fantastical?), but I also thoroughly love them in mundane situations. A quiet night at home? Roderick and Pamela throw a party filled with friends of theirs who are no doubt as delightful as they are?

I thought it was kind of hilarious how you needed the actors to tell you that the upstairs room Roderick selects for his music room is a miserable room, because otherwise it looks gorgeous: huge windows overlooking the sea, exactly where you’d want to sit for hours to read and look out at the scenery. You can definitely tell why the artist who previously inhabited the house selected the room for his studio. But, while pretty for us to look at, it’s miserable to actually be in; too cold and with an unpleasant feeling underneath that. This will, of course, be significant.)

I am not overly familiar with the gothic genre, but I did see Crimson Peak, and I think this could make an interesting double feature with it, if only for the ghostly presence who is not trying to scare or harm the young woman protagonist, but only wants the truth to be revealed. (I don’t know how common a gothic feature that is.) This does seem to have a lot of tropes of varying gothicity: an uncanny house! disturbing sounds in the night that vanish at dawn! a mysterious family history that must be revealed! a woman fleeing a house! being imprisoned in an asylum against one's will! Mortal Peril!

There are a couple of genuine jump scares and suspenseful moments, but when Stella was climbing the staircase toward the miserable room with the windows, alone in the dark house, I wasn’t afraid at all. I thought, she’s going to learn the truth. And there’s nothing to be frightened of in the truth.

After Stella’s mother’s beautiful, blond hair came up a few times, with no mention of Stella’s father’s hair color, I began to wonder if we were supposed to be wondering where Stella’s dark hair came from. (A good question, as it turned out.)

I don’t love that the movie plays on “gypsy” stereotypes, but at least the (offscreen) character described with those stereotypes (and for a time suspected of being the villain) is ultimately recognized as the good, loving person she actually was? I’d have preferred a misdirection not based on “of course you’re logically going to assume that this type of person is bad,” but, well, old movies. What are you going to do?

Fandom: If I Had a Million (1932)
Characters: Mary Walker (If I Had a Million (1932)) John Glidden
Request: I nominated and requested these two characters because I *particularly loved* them in the last part of the movie--how Mary has transformed her "old ladies' home" into a rollicking social club, and how John (always a very energetic man on his deathbed, I thought) seems to have found even more of a new lease on life in her company. Mary clearly has just as forceful a personality (and as little patience for fools) as John does, so it makes perfect sense that they'd get along so well! I'd love to read more about the further adventures of Mary, with or without John (in either a romantic or platonic capacity).

But you can also take both these character requests as optional--if you'd rather explore the aftermath of one of the other stories instead, go for it! Or you could explore the same basic premise played out in a different way (for instance, would eight people randomly selected from the telephone directory of a major American city *really* have all been white?). Does an IN SPACE AU seem fun? Have a blast.

More: Part of my adventure into watching Pre-Code films!

The premise: a fabulously wealthy and successful magnate who is told he is going to die soon does not want to leave his fortune to any of his relatives — he thinks that all of his family and everyone at his company are drips. When he’s told that if he tries to direct his money elsewhere, the will is likely to be contested and his wishes not actually carried out, he resolves to give his money away while he’s still alive, then! And opens up a telephone directory and flips through the pages, flicking ink drops until he has selected a name each on eight pages: each name is a person who will get one of his eight million dollars.

Sidenote: John Glidden is the most energetic man on his deathbed I’ve ever seen, and I was not at all surprised that he whirled away with a new lease on life in the final reel. Also, I’m sure that the contrast between himself and those we see working in his business was intended for comedic effect, but realistically speaking I’m completely unable to see how he could have built multiple fabulously successful companies if the people he hires are all unable to make decisions without him. Seriously, in the opening scene we see an employee telling someone that it’s impossible to make a decision in this matter without Mr. Glidden’s input, and he’s expected to die soon. Well, and how do you expect to continue after his death, then?! A strongly built institution should be able to survive after its founder’s death much more smoothly than that.

What follows are separate stories for each of the eight recipients of a million dollars, some quite short, others more elaborate, most of them funny, but at least a couple that are genuinely tragic, such as the man who has been sentenced to execution that day, and is convinced he only lost his appeal because he had no money to afford a good lawyer. When Mr. Glidden arrives at the prison to deliver the check, the warden urges him to pass it to the condemned man’s wife (soon to be widow), and not even tell the man himself about it. But Glidden insists on delivering it in person, and the condemned man is convinced that this can now repair the fault that led to his doom. If the only problem was that he didn’t have any money, see, and now he has money — well, surely that means the problem is solved?!

He had been prepared to go to his death with a kind of grave equanimity, but now is dragged to it, screaming about the injustice. All your money can’t fix this man’s real problem, Mr. Glidden, and no doubt the prison warden was right that the condemned man would have been happier if he had gone to his death without ever learning of the money.

A couple of recipients are hoist on their own petard — a check forger, known as such to all the banks in the city, finds himself unable to cash or deposit the check because no one will believe, coming from him, that it’s real. Denied the face value of the check, he keeps trying to find a way to trade it for only a portion of the value — less and less with each refused offer he makes — and at last is willing to accept only a night in a cot at a flophouse in exchange for the entire thing. Even this doesn’t work, though: the proprieter calls the police to pick him up, and burns the check as an obvious ridiculous fake.

Another recipient — cannily noticing the date the check is delivered (in person, as they all are) is April 1 — decides the check is fake to begin with, and tries to cheat a vendor by trading it for cash — ten dollars, he tells the shortsighted vendor that it’s worth — so he can take the vendor’s daughter on a date to the carnival. He and his pals only learn of their mistake when they see father and daughter alight from a fancy car in finery and furs — the bad trade went in the opposite direction!

One is almost too short to mention (a man who works in an office goes up through successive layers of management until he blows a raspberry at the head of the company), but another short one is one of my favorites (I’m saving my favorites for last, apparently). John finds a young woman to deliver a check to in a bar, and she assumes he is trying to hire her as a prostitute. This is how he learns of her profession, and he is flustered, and anxious to correct the misunderstanding, but is otherwise not judgmental of her at all, and neither is the film (ah, the joys of pre-Code films!). After he successfully explains the situation and gives her the check, she endures for a time the unpleasant company of her boyfriend or client, until she loses patience and leaves for a hotel, asks for their nicest room, takes off most of her (probably uncomfortable) clothes, and takes the second pillow from the elaborate bed and throws it in the closet. The single remaining pillow she centers at the head of the bed, and goes to sleep in luxurious solitude. (There are two moments in this film where the number of pillows on a bed has significance — later, in the story with Mary Walker, one of her fellow inhabitants of the retirement home hoards an extra pillow from another bed so that she can pretend her husband is using it, and still with her.)

I understand that the car-driving sequence may be the most famous/best-remembered. I did enjoy it; I loved the characters of the woman who receives the check and her husband, and their happy marriage; I enjoyed the conversation between the woman and an old friend from their vaudeville performance days at the beginning of the story (including the sly bit of misdirection where the woman says that, now that she's married, there's only one thing she lacks to be happy, and that's on its way — her old friend looks not at all thrilled at the prospect of congratulating her for a pregnancy, and I love that her forthcoming joy in fact turns out to be a car). Her use of the money to buy a fleet of sturdy cars and hire drivers to, at her direction, run badly-behaved "road hogs" off the road is exactly the kind of thorough working-out of a premise that I love in comedy — though their own driving behavior is definitely no better than anything they're driving others off the road for! (And it's a good thing this is a comedy, or people in the story would undoubtedly have been seriously injured as a result of all the smash-ups!).

I loved the first story for being a thorough working-out of a premise as well. This recipient is a man who is unhappy at work and at home; at work, he has been moved from the bookkeeping department of a china shop to the sales floor, at a higher rate of pay — less the cost of any breakages, of which there always are some, due to his nervousness. This means a lower actual rate of pay, but unfortunately there is no position in the bookkeeping department he can go back to — he must continue in the salesroom position and try to make it work, or else lose his position entirely. And at home, his wife (none too happy about the effective pay cut either!) nags him.

He initially takes John Glidden for a bill collector and offers him some nervous explanations, before grasping the true nature of the situation; when next we see him, he is magnificently dressed, with a pet rabbit on a ribbon (evidently a personal passion of his), and fabulously late to work — where he proceeds to apply the logic of the previously agreed-upon arrangement that breakages must be paid for and smashes up everything in the shop with the greatest glee!

The final story, with Mary Walker, is magnificent. She is an unhappy inhabitant of a women’s retirement home, run by a woman who is all too happy to impose her “Christian” virtues on the residents (no smoking! no playing cards!) but is callously uncaring when a new resident objects to the idea of changing clothes in a room full of other women on the grounds of modesty. She is cruel in many ways, and when she is on the point of bluntly reminding the lady with the extra pillow that her husband is dead, Mary slaps her hand over her mouth and drags her backward out of the room to yell at her in her own office. John Glidden finds her there, and hesitantly interrupts her rant (he would clearly be delighted to listen to her yell all day long) only because he hopes the news of the check he has for her will improve her day.

Oh, does it. The residents have not been allowed to do anything that brings them joy, from the “illicit” pleasures previously mentioned to having cats or even just cooking, but when they complain the woman in charge reminds them they are free to leave at any time, and they all know they have nowhere else to go — no family that would welcome them to stay, no other resources to fall back on. Mary’s million changes all that, and the retirement home is transformed into a social club, with all the pleasures denied to them before. Cats everywhere! Tables filled with card games! Smoke fills the room! Music! Dancing! Mixed company! And the ladies cook themselves, as they’ve been doing all their lives, and enforce the former staff sitting quietly in rocking chairs and not doing anything. John Glidden whirls out of his office in the last scene to join them.

I can definitely see why John and Mary hit it off so well. He complained voluminously at the beginning of the film about being surrounded by spineless people, and Mary is the first person in the film who’s as forceful a personality as he is. They go beautifully together, and I hope they’ll be very happy (in whatever capacity they spend time together).

And I think what I really loved most about this movie was watching the unfolding of people's private desires into the beautiful daylight of possibility. Someone wants to smash everything in the ship, or go to sleep in the finest hotel room alone, or be able to smoke and play cards and pet cats and cook biscuits — and then they get to do it! With gusto! It was a delight to watch, almost every time.

Fandom: The Talk of the Town (1942)
Characters: Michael Lightcap, Leopold Dilg, Nora Shelley
Request: IT'S SO THREESOME-Y! Give me the threesome, please :-D (Explicitness not at all required--though also not at all minded! ;-)--I love the sweet emotional gooey core of a relationship just as much as I could ever love any smut :-))

I could see Nora marrying Leopold and working as Michael's legal secretary (did married women work as legal secretaries then? I DON'T CARE), and them all actually being together outside of work--or whatever other arrangement of the details you like; so long as they ALL LOVE EACH OTHER and continue to think each other are THE GREATEST.

More: I used up all my time talking about the other two movies, and now my letter is already late; I have to post! So if I don’t have as much extra to say about this movie, that doesn’t mean it’s because I’m not as interested in it as the other two or anything. (Trust me, these three fandoms earned their nominations and request slots against fierce competition!)

I will note that this movie features a Supreme Court vacancy, at a time when, once we see the Supreme Court, it's a whole row of white dudes; also a bunch of townspeople conspire to fake a death and frame a guy for murder, when the death penalty is a possible sentence, and just, in case you weren't already familiar with the movie and were considering picking it up, I didn't want to let it go without a notification that it may contain more resonances with certain Stressful Current Events that you might necessarily be expecting from a randomly selected classic movie. (As for how this could impact fic-writing, if you feel like incorporating some of the political etc. themes from the film, please feel free! But if you'd rather just focus on the fluffy threesomeness, I would also be delighted!)

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Another exciting yuletide awaits! And thanks in advance for writing for me. :-)

I've tried to include some notes on source and availability below, in case you decide you'd like to try to write something other than what we matched on. Since my requests are for a webcomic/series of drawings on tumblr, a single page of another webcomic, a painting, and two movies, it should be pretty easy to pick up another source if you want to! And, sidenote, the length of my request or amount of extra notes in my letter should in no way be taken as indicators of my relative enthusiasm for these fandoms—I might have more or less to say about a request, but I only requested things I would all be genuinely happy to receive a story for.

I have no triggers or squicks you need to worry about avoiding—and please, if you have an idea you love that's different from what I say below, feel free to go with that. One of my favorite things about yuletides past is the wonderful things the writers of my stories did that I would never have expected and it could never have occurred to me to ask for.

Fandom: Mailbot (Webcomic)
Character: Mailbot
Request: Mailbot! Mailbot is an adorable robot who lives in cute drawings you can find here http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/search/mailbot -- I don't have a specific kind of story in mind for this request; I'd just love to see more Mailbot! You could expand on a situation in a particular drawing/comic strip, or maybe pull together several of them? or just explore the general premise of Mailbot's everyday adventures!

I think I've mentioned that I like robots in every Yuletide letter since I started participating, whether it was in any way relevant to the fandoms I was requesting or not. :-P So: adorable robot(s)! I am predisposed to like probably anything you would come up with for this fandom. As for some things I like about the source in addition to adorable robots, I love how the message of the very first Mailbot comic is that sometimes you can make a mistake and things still turn out okay, and I love Mailbot's kind and cheerful nature.

Fandom: Hark! A Vagrant
Character: Dr. Sara Josephine Baker (Hark! A Vagrant)
Request: I agonized over whether to nominate this under Hark! A Vagrant (which is, after all, the only reason I ever found out about Dr. Sara Josephine Baker in the first place) or as some kind of RPF fandom (since it's the real-life details from her wikipedia page that REALLY ignited my interest in a possible yuletide story!). In the end I decided to nominate under Hark! A Vagrant mostly because I didn't feel like I could come up with a sensible RPF category/label. :-P

So! IN ADDITION to all the awesome public health accomplishments of Dr. Baker that we learn about in the comic, wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Josephine_Baker#Personal_life) also tells me that she lived with two other women, one of whom 'identified as a "woman-oriented woman."' !!!!! So naturally I'm interested in the possibility of a Sarah Josephine Baker/Ida Alexa Ross Wylie/Louise Pearce threesome (in whatever romantic/sexual/platonic configuration may be pleasing to you to write :-)).

I'm not an expert on the relevant history or anything--I pretty much just know what's in the comic and the wikipedia page--so, uh, don't feel any need to be any more "historically accurate" than the comic itself. :-P If you want to go for the same kind of tone as the comic, that's cool! If you are a secret expert in the history, I will admire! If you'd be interested in exploring some other kind of setting or approach entirely (ex.: lesbian public health doctor in SPAAAAAACE)--also cool!

I think I pretty much already included all the extra notes I would have put here in the letter in the request itself—except for a source link! This is the Hark! A Vagrant in which Sara Josephine Baker appears: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php/index.php?id=335

(Google would probably also have been obliging, but I wanted to take any guesswork out.)

Fandom: Beautiful Losers II - Jack Vettriano
Characters: Seated Man (Beautiful Losers II) Standing Man (Beautiful Losers II) Woman (Beautiful Losers II)
Request: You can see this artwork here! https://www.jackvettriano.com/exhibitions/lovers-strangers/beautiful-losers-ii-3/

This picture just tells such a story, doesn't it? I'd love to see more of it. :-)

Threesomes are my jam. This doesn't necessarily *have to* be a sexy threesome story, but that would be very welcome if you are so inclined! Whether they're already all three in an established relationship together, or a couple bringing in a friend as a third (and if so, which pair are the couple!), or some other possibility is up to you. I do have a fondness for some degree of established relationship--the comfortableness with each other that that can bring--but I have certainly also read reams of fanfic about first times, so I'm not exactly opposed to that, either. :-)

I will say, from the body language it seems like the woman might not be entirely happy to be there... but I do prefer my threesomes happy, or at least in overall happy relationships even if the immediate situation isn't happy. Maybe she could be upset about something else, and they could be comforting her? Or something else--you don't need to feel wedded to the idea that she's unhappy at all--I just wanted to mention my take on what seemed like it might be an obvious interpretation of the picture.

Fandom: Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Character: Marge Sherwood
Request: Consider Marge. Consider how Marge is absolutely right about Tom Ripley in the end. Consider how no one will believe her because the old boys' club would rather draw together to protect even someone who murdered one of its own sons than take a woman seriously. Consider Marge returning home from Europe, grieving, betrayed. Consider what she does next. Consider how she picks the pieces of her life back up again.

Consider the book she's been writing since before she ever met Tom Ripley, or even Dickie Greenleaf. Consider what kind of book she might be working on, what work she would consider so important—and take it seriously, because she does, even if no one else does. Consider whether the direction of her work would change after her experiences in Europe, and if so, how.

Consider her eventually being vindicated about the nature of Tom Ripley. Or, alternately, consider her living so well that he recedes ever smaller in the rear-view mirror of her life.

Consider Marge.

And then tell me something about her.

This request is primarily based on the movie, but I have read the books as well (although it was several years ago now). Feel free to incorporate or disregard anything you wish from the books—for instance, we know what Marge's book is about in the books, but there's no need for that to be the same in the movie/your story, unless you want it to be.

Once again, I am grateful to whoever nominated this movie and included Marge in the character list! I had thought I would probably have to retire this request, but now it gets another chance. :-)

Fandom: Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Character: Bella (Hunt for the Wilderpeople)
Request: I really enjoyed this movie, but I was disappointed that it was Yet Another Story whose plot was kicked off by a woman's death. I'd love to see an AU where Bella didn't die--and whether their ordinary lives continue together on the upward trend you could expect, or they still (somehow??) manage to wind up in some of the wacky adventures they have in the movie is up to you. Or pre-movie Bella backstory--or whatever takes your fancy! I'd just love for Bella to have more room to breathe in a story that doesn't treat her as expendable.

I remember how I misjudged Bella at first—as I think maybe the audience was meant to. At first I thought she seemed unprepared for how challenging caring for Ricky was likely to be, even a little silly and naive, and saying the wrong things—and then everything she does is actually exactly right for him, she knows exactly what she's doing and what he needs, and he unfolds so beautifully. She's got such a deep well of caring and competence, and I really respect that—and I hated the loss of that, of her, in the movie.

Dear Yuletide Writer!

One of my favorite things about my Yuletide stories from years past is the wonderful things it could never even have occurred to me to ask for. So all of the below is there in case you need/want it, but please feel free to explore other directions for anything if you're inspired to!

Well, this year I have two femslash requests, two single-character requests, and two worldbuilding/general "see what you can do with this!" type of requests. The source materials are one Twitter account, one irregular webcomic, one short film of less than 10 minutes, one novel, one movie, and one commercial. There are a bunch of short and easy to acquire source materials in here, so if you're considering writing for me on something other than what we matched on, you have options! I included some source/availability notes in the prompts themselves, and I'll elaborate where necessary below.

If you were champing at the bit for me to post this year's letter (and... I don't blame you!), then you may possibly have already looked back at some previous years' letters to get an idea of my general likes and dislikes—they don't change terribly much from year to year!

The Strange Log (Twitter)
The Strange Log: https://twitter.com/TheStrangeLog

You could go so many directions with this—including ones I haven't thought of, I'm sure! If you want to do something that's nothing like what I mention here, please feel free to go with that.

Some possiblities: Pick one or several tweets and write a story about the world they describe, where such strange things happen? Do the changes described in the tweets happen in the world(s), and if so, do the inhabitants notice? I've scrolled back a fair bit in the timeline but definitely haven't read all the tweets yet; I don't know if you want to base your story on particular tweets, or just go with the general concept/atmosphere. Whether seriously worldbuild-y or reveling in the absurdity—or both, or something else entirely!—I'm interested to see what you come up with.

I found out about The Strange Log from this tumblr post, and when I followed the link to the Twitter account I was bewitched by the tiny doses of absurdity. So many fascinating hooks you could hang a story on! I don't actually play a lot of video games/computer games, so while these are tweets from game change logs, a story idea that depends on familiarity with any specific game would probably be lost on me. But if you want to write about an imaginary computer game, that would be fine by me! Or of course writing about whatever world(s) is/are described by the tweets without reference to the external framework of a game at all.

Mailbot (Mailbot (Webcomic))
1. I love robots. I think I may have mentioned this in every Yuletide letter list of likes and dislikes since I started doing Yuletide.

2. MAILBOT IS SO ADORABLE <3 I love his kind and cheerful nature and how he keeps trying and how the message of the very first Mailbot comic is that sometimes you can make a mistake and things still turn out okay :-)

3. I listed this as a webcomic for... lack of... a better category? Some of the Mailbot things are definitely structured like a comic strip, some of them are just drawings (some of those in response to asks/specific prompts), some of them tell a story and some don't...

4. You can find them here! (Along with things like askbox commentary and reblogs of other people's fanart) http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/search/mailbot/

5. I really don't have a particular story in mind, I'm just interested to see what stories could come of this! Jump off from one of the existing comics/drawings, or fill in some more of Mailbot's character/backstory or the surrounding worldbuilding... maybe a new adventure for Mailbot? I'm interested in it all!

I kind of nominated this as a webcomic for lack of a better category. Some of the Mailbot drawings are definitely formatted as a comic! But it's not really a... formal webcomic? There are also e.g. drawings in response to asks, and the Mailbot drawings are one subset of the artist's larger group of cutebot drawings. (Feel free to bring in any of the other cutebots if you want to, by the way, or to make up new ones of your own!) And apparently the AO3 tag wrangling guidelines specifically say that you should not include the author's/artist's name, which bugged me, so: these are by Matthew McGuigan! And they are really cool.

Anyway, for a while I was collecting links of all the Mailbot posts I saw, being aware that I might still be missing some since they're not tagged, and that list is below.

http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/121001946301/by-the-way-i-am-officially-delegating-all-asks-to
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/121032612226/mailbot-answers-your-questions-in-a-helpful-way
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/127375873496/an-important-lesson-about-making-mistakes-you-can
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/127538541666/here-is-the-second-part-by-itself-because-the
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/127699127506/no-problem-too-tall-no-letter-too-small
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/128040522656/would-is-be-stupid-if-i-asked-for-a-cute-little
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/129805871771/i-just-broke-up-with-my-boyfriend-of-3-years-can
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/130563684511/mattmcguigan-toxicrecall-excuse-me-mail
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/131494479256/hey-canadian-friends-you-should-definitely-go
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/132459362266/mailbot-lends-a-hand
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/132903387326/i-need-resolution-for-the-guy-who-gave-his-letter
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/136371359521/how-did-mailbot-get-the-lollipop-and-comb
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/136432440996/hello-there-ive-been-so-anxious-and-stressed-out
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/136588983696/yes-hello-i-am-here-to-add-one-1-existential
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/140919233626/does-mailbot-have-a-special-someone-a-significant
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/146929584901/tips-the-courier-robot
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/post/146929804631/i-do-believe-the-anon-meant-in-giving-the-mailbot

And then I discovered that you can do a pretty good job of getting all the Mailbot posts here!
http://mattmcguigan.tumblr.com/search/mailbot/

This also includes e.g. reblogs of other people's fanart, and replies to asks, and so on, so it's not just McGuigan's Mailbot drawings, but I think it might include them all?

A Moment (2016 Short Film)
Source notes: a ~10-minute short film available on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOWSo6frm44

BUT WHAT IF THEY ACTUALLY TALKED TO EACH OTHER
(that's it that's the prompt)

No but seriously: an alternate ending, where they do actually talk to each other? or after the end of the film, they seek out and find each other again, perhaps overcoming bus-system-related mishaps to do so (changed work schedules, service changes/reroutings, other obstacles)? Deeper exploration of the backstory for either or both characters would be welcome; we get a number of intriguing details that could be fleshed out! Or future fic with both of them? And in case it isn't clear: femslash is very, very welcome for this prompt! <3

A note: the film uses She and Her consistently to refer to each character ("For a moment, Her wondered what it would be like to know She")—but you can feel free to drop the pronoun conceit and give them other names in your story if you like. Or perhaps their names sound like She and Her, or those are nicknames? However you'd like to handle it, really.

The actual film is about 7 minutes, and the rest is credits. It's the first of Issa Rae's Short Films Sundays that I've watched (and I expect that by the time I finish watching the rest of them, I may have some more potential Yuletide fandoms for next year!).

So, some of the specifics I would absolutely be more interested in knowing about are Her reading interests, Her history in a band and Her work (and like, what does she do on the days she isn't working at the Vietnamese restaurant? Does she have another job, or something else going on, like school or another project?). In a way, even though She opens the film, we get even fewer specifics about her—like we don't even know where she's riding the bus to and from every day! Still in school, her own job, ..?

I didn't grow up riding the bus—in fact for years I lived in places without any public transportation at all—but I think one of the reasons I liked this film so much is that I, too, fell in love with public transportation at a young age, the first time I visited a city with a metro subway system when I was 11.

Also, I technically went to college about an hour outside Los Angeles, where this film is set, but I didn't venture off campus very much so I don't have, like, really detailed knowledge of the setting or anything.

The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
So, I didn’t request any characters because this really is a “worldbuilding” request for me; I don’t care whether you focus on or even include any of the characters from the book, but I’d love to learn more about the world the Long Walk happens in. Of course, you may have signed up to write specific characters, so if you do want to include or focus on those book characters: go for it! Just, that’s not required, and original characters are totally fine by me.

Some ideas: So, if most kids over twelve take the test, why are there only boys on the Long Walk? (Unexamined sexism on the part of the author and/or the characters seems likely, of course—they just forgot that "almost all kids" includes girls, too?) Does a token girl ever make it to the Walk, or maybe there's a separate event for girls (perhaps not as well-publicized, just like women's sports in our world)? Or tell me more about how the Long Walk looks from the outside, since we see the event from the inside in the book, but there's clearly a lot of spectacle/publicity and outside observers for the event. Or how about a historical perspective on this time period from further in the future—a future that could be better, worse, or simply differently horrible?

And please don’t think that “worldbuilding” means that I only want some grand, sweeping epic; I’d be just as happy to see how the larger wrongness of the world is reflected in the small events and everyday lives of ordinary people, the ways in which their "normal" is skewed.

In my yuletide letters I've often included something like "unrelentingly grim worlds" in my Dislikes list. In relation to this fandom, that might give you pause! Obviously the world of the story is grim, but what I mean is: the characters do still have other things in their lives, things they like, people they value, things they enjoy—you certainly don't have to summon up a hopeful ending for a Long Walk story! Just a recognition of the emotional complexity of a person's life under these circumstances will satisfy this requirement for me. (Indeed, there can be something particularly chilling about the contrast between what a character thinks are the normal ups and downs of life and what the reader as an outside observer thinks is a horrifying set of circumstances.)

Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Consider Marge. Consider how Marge is absolutely right about Tom Ripley in the end. Consider how no one will believe her because the old boys' club would rather draw together to protect even someone who murdered one of its own sons than take a woman seriously. Consider Marge returning home from Europe, grieving, betrayed. Consider what she does next. Consider how she picks the pieces of her life back up again.

Consider the book she's been writing since before she ever met Tom Ripley, or even Dickie Greenleaf. Consider what kind of book she might be working on, what work she would consider so important—and take it seriously, because she does, even if no one else does. Consider whether the direction of her work would change after her experiences in Europe, and if so, how.

Consider her eventually being vindicated about the nature of Tom Ripley. Or, alternately, consider her living so well that he recedes ever smaller in the rear-view mirror of her life.

Consider Marge.

And then tell me something about her.

This request is primarily based on the movie, but I have read the books as well (although it was several years ago now). Feel free to incorporate or disregard anything you wish from the books—for instance, we know what Marge's book is about in the books, but there's no need for that to be the same in the movie/your story, unless you want it to be.

I'M SO GRATEFUL to whoever nominated this fandom including this character this year! I get to resurrect my old request. :-D

McDonald's "Mirai no Watashi" Commercial
OH MY GOSH! I had "McDonald's anime ad femslash" down on my (very long) list of potential Yuletide fandoms; I'm so glad somebody actually nominated it!!

So like. Obviously I want femslash for this; was that not obvious? ;-) These two are so cute! And the story in the ad is so simple and happy; I love people being good at what they do and enjoying it (in this case, teaching/learning how to be good at it).

Maybe elaborate on one of the scenarios depicted in the ad? Or fill in a missing scene? Or future-fic—maybe one of them has to move on from McDonalds before they can actually get together (it seems like they might be in a manager-supervisee position, and so getting involved while that's the case could be kind of inherently skeevy?). No preference on ratings: keep it as gen as the commercial or go all the way up to explicit sex or anything in between. :-)

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTrC86mmPaw

This Yuletide letter is now complete!

General notes:
First of all, thank you, yuletide writer! I love this exchange, and I hope you have fun doing it too. :-)

If you already have something you want to write for one of these fandoms, or you get a great idea that's nothing like what I've outlined here, please go for it; some of my favorite things in yuletide stories of years past are things it would never have occurred to me to ask for. (Also, please don't take it that the length at which I talk about each fandom has any relationship with how much I want a story for it!)

Cool bits/some stuff I like (not necessarily relevant to every fandom/prompt!): time travel, hurt/comfort, robots, threesomes, trust, friendship, competence, worldbuilding, audacity, responsible use of authority, the moment where everything changes. Racebending, transgender characters, and similar character interpretations/modifications are always welcome.

Good news: I don't have any squicks or triggers! Yay! I do tend to find love triangles and jealousy a bit boring/uninteresting, but basically there's not a huge "Avoid this!" list for you to worry about.

I don't know how useful it would be, but I'm also on tumblr in case that's a thing that's relevant to your interests: http://ageorwizardry.tumblr.com/

I've also added notes about the source material for each fandom in case you are curious/casting around for possible backup fandoms.

Fandom: Sweeney Todd - Sondheim/Wheeler
Characters: Johanna Barker (Sondheim/Wheeler) Anthony Hope (Sondheim/Wheeler)
Optional details: I love stories about people trying to be good to each other and take care of each other after terrible things have happened to them, and I'd love to see that with these two. While we don't know much of Anthony's background, what we know of Johanna's certainly makes it seem plausible that she may have the more traumatic background, of the two of them--still, I don't think I'd like a story with a dynamic of Anthony being the Normal Person who's here to Make Johanna Better--so feel free to invent any kind of complementary backstory for him you like. (I'm actually kind of fond of the idea that he gets depressed, for instance--and his positive outlook is a practiced defense against it. This isn't required, though; I only mention it in case the idea grabs you, too!)

I had initially toyed with the idea of asking for Sweeney Todd Trauma Recovery Fic over a broader range of possible characters (what if Mrs. Lovett was genuinely nurturing, instead of just putting on a show of it occasionally when she felt like it? or what if Sweeney Todd took the energy he devotes to his revenge and instead directed it toward finding and rebuilding his family?), but it ended up seeming like those might be AUs too universe-breaking to ask for. :-P If you do happen to feel called to any of those ideas, though, I'd love to see what you do with them. (And this is explicit permission to focus on characters other than the ones I've requested if you go with one of those story ideas instead.)
Source: A musical play whose cast recording is commercially available.

Reading alllll the Bucky Barnes recovery fic that came out of Captain America: The Winter Soldier last year has kind of made me want the same kind of trauma recovery fic for EVERY FANDOM. (Don't sweat it if you're not familiar with the Marvel movies/fandom; I'm just using that as a jumping off point.) In a historical setting like this, of course, there's a balance to strike: the characters certainly wouldn't have anything like the modern conception of PTSD, but humans have had a fairly consistent range of reactions to traumatic events documented over long stretches of history (I'm thinking here of Rachel Manija Brown's post on PTSD that points out a speech in a Shakespeare play that practically lists the modern diagnostic criteria for PTSD). At the time the play is set, psychology sort of hadn't been invented yet as a field of knowledge, but people obviously still had feelings about things; they just wouldn't have had psychology as we know it as a tool for understanding and dealing with them.

If "trauma recovery" is seeming to you like a Big Deal, heavy-research-y label, I don't want to scare you off—try thinking of it as hurt/comfort? Or, just a hopeful ending for these characters that doesn't ignore how they got there, if that entire kind of thing isn't up your alley.

Fandom: August: Osage County (2013)
Character: Johnna Monevata
Optional details: MOTHERFUCKING SUPERHERO JOHNNA MONEVATA.

I walked out of the theater feeling like Johnna going after Steve with a shovel in defense of Jean just might just be the one unambiguously good act in the entire movie. After re-watching it before Yuletide this year, I still think that may be right.

Johnna’s job requires her to perform both physical and emotional care while concealing whatever her real feelings may be. Aside from her clear and immediate conviction that a grown man making advances on a young teenager is Wrong and Must Be Stopped, we see very little of what Johnna thinks—just her calm professionalism as she keeps her sphere of things running smoothly (while just about the entire situtation around her is falling into various kinds of pieces). So: show some of what Johnna's thinking. What does she think of the book of poetry Bev lent her that she’s reading? What does she read when she's reading for herself? What else is in her head and her heart and her life besides this messed up family she's working for that the movie focuses on?
Source: A 2-hour film of fairly recent release.

At the end, when Violet finally turns to Johnna for comfort after driving everyone else in her life away, Johnna is kind, but I feel so bad for the situation she’s in—everyone else can choose to leave, forever if they like, but she’s obligated to stay. I mean, it's a job, and one she may (?) be able to quit if she wants to, but it's still a difficult, different kind of emotional labor from being family—and a burden that falls disproportionately on women of color, like Johnna.

I also really respect how good at her job Johnna clearly is. Based on how capably she handles things in a situation like this—where the actual person who hired her has died abruptly, and practically everything about her day-to-day work must have changed dramatically, and there must be nobody providing anything like a coherent set of guidelines or instructions—I'd think this can't be the first time she's done work like this; there's no apparent learning curve. Remember above where I said I liked competence? I admire how Johnna evidently just figures out what needs to be done and does it, and keeps herself as clear of the surrounding fray as possible (I'm thinking here specifically of that time she says, "I'll eat in my room," and glides straight through and out of the room the family's next horrible conversation is happening in).

One thing I realized, upon re-watching this movie, is how tired I am of stories about people doing terrible things to each other because terrible things have happened to them. Terrible things happen to people, and their stories matter—but those stories I'm most interested in are the ones about people trying to figure out how to do good and be kind after great hurt. Which is to say: don’t feel you need to mimic the tone or philosophy of the play/movie, necessarily; the hopeless tragedy of the dysfunctional American family is not what I’m here for.

Fandom: Change of Scenery paintings - Rob Gonsalves
Characters: [none requested]
Optional details: In these two paintings, people cut away pieces of curtains to change the shape of the view outside--and perhaps change the view itself?

In the world of the paintings, *is* it just an optical illusion? A game of some kind? Something to do if you have enough imagination, or if you can't travel to see the things you want to yourself? Or are the windows actually becoming portals to entirely different landscapes? (Is it just the view that changes, or also where you end up if you step through the window?) Is it a known skill in this world, something you can hire people to do for you or DIY, or something secret only a few have stumbled upon? In both scenes, there are open books that it seems like the people might be referring to as they work. Let your imagination fly free! I'd be fascinated to see what you come up with. Feel free either to focus on the specific people in the paintings if you'd like to, or to explore the wider world/make up new characters if you don't.
Source: Two paintings, viewable here: A Change of Scenery and Change of Scenery II (Making Mountains). If you're seeking a backup fandom, this is probably the best in terms of quickness and ease of accessing and familiarizing yourself with the source!

Fandom: 커피프린스 1호점 | Coffee Prince
Characters: Choi Han Seong Go Eun Chan
Optional details: So, I'm pretty curious about the alternate universe where Eun Chan and Han Seong ended up together instead--aside from the ordained-to-be-together factor of the canon pairings, it seems like not very much would have had to go differently for that to happen. So if you write that, you will interest me very much! If you'd rather not write a romantic relationship between them, I will also be happy with a story about their relationship in the canon universe--platonic friendships are always relevant to my interests as well.
Source: A 17-episode Korean television show. Episodes subtitled in English are available (in the U.S. at least) to hulu subscribers; I'm not sure where else this may be currently available.

My favorite single line in the entire show is when Han Kyul is shopping for an engagement ring for Eun Chan, and the salesgirl suggests one that Han Kyul rejects because "She's not very feminine." And he says it with such a smile on his face, because he adores her, and she does not have to change at all in order to win his love. That's Han Kyul and I requested Han Seong, of course, but he also adores Eun Chan without her having to change anything. It's such a refreshing change from all the stories where a girl has to go through a makeover or become more sexy/feminine before the love story can happen. (Okay, the end of the last episode seems a little makeover-y--she certainly comes back from Italy looking a lot more feminine than she did before. I just... kind of... ignore that :-P) (Of course, there's also that early episode where Eun Chan actually does get a makeover in order to go to the party. But even that I was okay with because a) Han Seong explicitly told her she didn't have to change anything to go to the party, and b) Eun Chan preferred the offered makeover to her family's attempt at doing the same thing. And it was just a one-off, special occasion thing, not part of a transformation arc for Eun Chan.) So basically: I love how awesome Eun Chan is and how so many other characters recognize how awesome she is and adore her just the way she is.

Fandom: The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Characters: [none requested]
Optional details: So, I didn’t request any characters because this really is a “worldbuilding” request for me; I don’t care whether you focus on or even include any of the characters from the book, but I’d love to learn more about the world the Long Walk happens in. Of course, you may have signed up to write specific characters, so if you do want to include or focus on those book characters: go for it! Just, that’s not required, and original characters are totally fine by me.

Some ideas: So, if most kids over twelve take the test, why are there only boys on the Long Walk? (Did the author and/or the characters forget that "almost all kids" includes girls, too?) Does a token girl ever make it to the Walk, or is there a separate event for girls (perhaps not as well-publicized, just like women's sports in our world)? Or tell me more about the experience from outside the Long Walk, since we see the event from the inside in the book. Or how about a historical perspective on this time period from the future—a future that could be better, worse, or simply differently horrible?

And please don’t think that “worldbuilding” means that I only want some grand, sweeping epic; I’d be just as happy to see how the larger wrongness of the world is reflected in the small events and everyday lives of ordinary people, the ways in which their "normal" is skewed.
Source: A novel of moderate length (300-400 pages, it seems depending on edition) by Richard Bachman, an alias of Stephen King. (As you might tell from the optional details above, also hella depressing, if that's a consideration.)

I'm excited to be able to repeat my Long Walk request from last year! I wasn't planning to, at all; I only discovered it had been nominated again during the sign-ups phase. :-) Honestly, I wrote an unreasonably long Yuletide letter for this fandom last year, at the link if you want to check it out! I think I did a much better job of condensing it down to the most important parts in my request for this year.

Fandom: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Characters: Mike Timlin (Inside Llewyn Davis)
Optional details: So why did Mike Timlin throw himself off the George Washington Bridge?

He's the ghost that haunts the entirety of this movie, hanging over everything but never seen, a mystery. Tell me something about him from before, when he was still alive; show me something about this man who's a motivating factor for so much in this movie, for the people he's left behind. A snapshot, something about his work with Llewyn, anything--up to and including his suicide or not, as you wish.
Source: A ~100-minute film of fairly recent release.

I thought this was a beautiful film, and I felt such sympathy for Llewyn, even as I could absolutely see how frustrating he'd be for everyone around him—lord knows I also wouldn't be at my best when bouncing around between places to stay and often not knowing where I'd sleep the next night! It seems likely things might have been better for him, at least in some respects, when Mike Timlin was still alive. This is about Llewyn so far and my request is for Mike, but that's part of where it comes from—we learn barely anything about Mike in the course of the film; we just see the effect his death has had on Llewyn and other characters, and we hear his voice in just one song. The film is all about Llewyn, but he can have as small or large a role in your story about Mike as you like—or be absent entirely. I'm not very knowledgeable about the time and place of the setting, so historical research/expertise on your part will be admired but not required. :-)

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Optional details are optional!

If you already have a story singing in your heart for one of these fandoms, you just go ahead and write it. All if this information is here for you only in case you want it.

My default stance on characterizations, pairings, interpretations, etc. is that of willing to be convinced; even if it doesn't match the way I already see things, I can believe it for the length of the story and be happy with it. When it comes to kinks (which are also optional, dear writer!), it's more important to me that the kink works for the character(s) than whether it was something I already knew I was into. Like, I've read sweet, tender cannibalism fantasies, among many other amazing fanfics featuring kinks in ways I could never have imagined beforehand, so I'm really not going to pre-emptively rule anything out. Please don't feel bound or restricted by what I say here if you have another idea.

I have no squicks or triggers!

Some things I like in stories (not necessarily relevant to each request): time travel, robots, trust, competence, friendship, threesomes, audacity, revolutions, worldbuilding, meaningful gifts, responsible use of authority, the moment when everything changes. Characters of all genders and sexualities are always welcome.

I don't tend to enjoy love triangles or jealousy in stories.

With that, on to the fandom-specific prompts, including additional details for some of them.

The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
So, I didn’t request any characters because this really is a “worldbuilding” request; I don’t care whether you focus on or even include any of the characters from the book, but I’d love to learn more about the world the Long Walk happens in, in any of severalmany directions you may choose to explore. (And if you do want to include or focus on book characters: go for it! Just, that’s not required, and original characters are totally fine.)

Some ideas: So, if most kids over twelve take the test, why are there only boys on the Long Walk? (Did the author and/or the characters forget that "almost all kids" includes girls, too?) Or tell me about a special moment on a Walk one year. Does anyone ever attempt the rebellion that Garraty at one point realizes they've missed the chance for, and if so, what happens then? Or tell me something about the rise to power of the Major—how did this version of the United States get to be the way it is, anyway? How about a historical perspective on this time period from the future—a future that could be better, worse, or simply differently horrible?

And please don’t think that “worldbuilding” means that I only want some grand, sweeping epic; I’d be just as happy to see how the larger wrongness of the world is reflected in the small events and everyday lives of ordinary people, the ways in which their "normal" is skewed.

My Yuletide Letter contains some elaborations on these ideas, in case you'd like more about my background thinking that led up to them.

Elaborations follow!

“…most of the kids in the country over twelve take the tests but only one in fifty passes.”

So, if most kids over twelve take the test, why are there only boys on the Long Walk?

I mean, probably the answer to this is unexamined sexism on the part of the author and/or the characters (depending on how you want to interpret it) meaning they didn’t really think through the fact that “almost all kids” includes girls too.

But this is fanfiction! That doesn’t have to be our interpretation.

Assuming girls take the test too, are they just overwhelmingly weeded out at the grading stage? Are there ever years where a Token Girl does make it to the Walk? Or do girls have another event besides the Long Walk just for them, and if so, what does that look like? (And it’s probably not as well publicized as the Long Walk is, just like women’s sports in our world, which might account for why it doesn’t seem to be on any of the Walkers’ radar in the book.) Perhaps it takes place in another part of the country? (It always seemed a bit odd to me that something billed as the “national pastime” would always start in Maine and only ever take place in a very small part of the country.)

I’d be fascinated to see something about the media treatment of the Long Walk—I mean, it’s “the national pastime,” immensely popular, watched by throngs of people crowded along the roadside as well as broadcast throughout the rest of the nation, but in the book we mostly see the event from the inside, and I’m sure the media depiction is very different experience. There seem to be aspects of the Walk the participants didn’t expect, despite their familiarity with coverage of previous Walks. And it seems odd to me that they’re not even certain whether the winners of previous years are even alive or whether they’ve been taken out somewhere and shot. Are there no retrospectives with the previous years’ winners, no “where are they now?” Not a single talking head with a microphone walks up to the last walker standing and asks the idiotic question, “How does it feel to have just won the Long Walk?” No one writes magazine puff pieces about what winners request for their prize afterwards? What does an unlucky media intern’s Walk-related assignments look like?

I’d be fascinated by any backstory exploring how this version of the United States got this way. Is it like the Star Trek Mirror Universe where everything is just inexplicably darker? Or did the U.S. specifically take an even wronger turn all by itself? How did the Major’s rise to power come about? Speaking of which: I’m no military expert, but isn’t “major” kind of a low rank? For someone who’s apparently in charge of the entire country? Or is it, like, a nickname? Is his position even an officially established one, within the framework of existing government, or did he execute some kind of coup, or..?

Check Please! (Webcomic)
HOW CUTE IS EVERYONE, I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS.

I did not request specific characters for this fandom because I would truly be happy with fic about ANY/ALL of the nominated charcters, so, you just go where your heart takes you, you fellow Check-Please!-lovin' fool. ;-) You have SO MANY DIFFERENT OPTIONS for what you could write to make me happy with your story for this fandom, just. Pick one you like and GO WITH IT. Of course Jack and Bitty kissing and/or touching each other’s butts would be relevant to my interests, but so would MANY OTHER THINGS AS WELL. Jack’s *angsty past* (and, er, present)? Bitty’s radiantly sunshiny self? (Bitty’s angsty past?? It seems like it could maybe be a thing!) Jack’s future happiness (I JUST WANT JACK TO BE HAPPY OKAY)? (Now don't think I really want Jack and/or Bitty more than the others! I just got KIND OF ON A ROLL starting off, there.) More of the awesome Ransom & Holster show? The awesome adventures of Lardo that we have not yet seen? More meta and fourth-wall-breaking musings from Johnson the goalie? Or how about the backgrounds/adventures/future exploits of the new frogs? Seriously, you could give me the margin notes from Shitty’s gender studies thesis and I’d be over the moon (SHITTY IS SO AMAZING, his margin notes would be SUCH A DELIGHT). If you want to explore non-nominated characters, outsider POV, original characters? HAVE A BLAST.

So like, pick your favorite character or just something you’d like to explore and GO WILD. I’ll be cheering for you from the stands. :-D

Maleficent (2014)
Maleficent, Aurora
OKAY BUT MALEFICENT LITERALLY WAKES AURORA WITH TRUE LOVE’S KISS THOUGH

(that’s it that’s the prompt)

If you want some more to go on, though, here it is!

MALEFICENT AND AURORA LOVE EACH OTHER BEST; DISCUSS. Feel free to utterly disregard the suggestions of male-female pairing-off the end of the movie makes by having Aurora smile at the prince and Maleficent fly off with Diaval because WHATEVER, MALEFICENT AND AURORA HAVE TRUE LOVE’S KISS. IT’S CANON. (Gosh, I’m still excited over that. Can you tell?) If you’re just especially inspired to include either of the men in particularly meaningful roles, I don’t object; I would just prefer for the focus to be on the relationship between the two women. I’m fond of stories about “nontraditional” relationships (not the ideal umbrella term, but eurgh) of many kinds: queer, poly, platonic, kinky, so all of that territory is wide open! (If you do go the romantic route—which, yes, LESBIANS ARE AWESOME :-D—there is also that kiiind of potentially creepy I-watched-you-grow-up age difference involved? which you may or may not wish to explore, but which I feel could yield some interesting results if you're inclined to.) You’re also wide open in terms of setting: a missing scene during the movie? an alternate timeline? (like: what if Aurora actually had gone to live with Maleficent in the Moors before she found out about the curse and everything? they both seemed really happy about that plan.) after the movie? (like: uniting the kingdoms seems like Maleficent is reeeeally putting a lot of trust not only in Aurora, who totally deserves it, but also all of Aurora’s successors, which seems a lot more dodgy: how does that work out? or what safeguards have they put in place to ensure that it does? What does it mean that the Disney's Sleeping Beauty version of the story, rather than the version told in Maleficent, is apparently handed down to future generations?) Worldbuild-y fic or pwp or fluff or political intrigue, it’s all good with me! HAVE FUN :-D :-D :-D

Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Marge Sherwood
Consider Marge. Consider how Marge is absolutely right about Tom Ripley in the end. Consider how no one will believe her because the old boys' club would rather draw together to protect even someone who murdered one of its own sons than take a woman seriously. Consider Marge returning home from Europe, grieving, betrayed. Consider what she does next. Consider how she picks the pieces of her life back up again.

Consider the book she's been writing since before she ever met Tom Ripley, or even Dickie Greenleaf. Consider what kind of book she might be working on, what work she would consider so important—and take it seriously, because she does, even if no one else does. Consider whether the direction of her work would change after her experiences in Europe, and if so, how.

Consider her eventually being vindicated about the nature of Tom Ripley. Or, alternately, consider her living so well that he recedes ever smaller in the rear-view mirror of her life.

Consider Marge.

And then tell me something about her.

This request is primarily based on the movie, but I have read the books as well, so I'm familiar with both sources and where they diverge. Feel free to incorporate or disregard anything you wish from the books—for instance, we know what Marge's book is about in the books, but there's no need for that to be the same in the movie/your story, unless you want it to be.

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Tamora Calhoun, Fix-It Felix Jr.
I can't be the only one who watched that scene with Sergeant Calhoun repeatedly hitting Felix in the face, with Felix gleefully asking her to keep hitting him, and with the magical hammer fixing any damage she did to him, and thought, "There is some enormous kinky potential here," right? :-D :-D

So I'd be really excited by that story. But if you'd rather not go the kink route, please show me anything your heart desires about Felix and Tamora's developing relationship. (Or established relationship!) Some possible ideas: What else *do* they get up to in the bedroom? How is Tamora dealing with/recovering from her traumatic past? What do they do for fun? What other game worlds do they explore? Or whatever other scenario you can dream up! I love the subversion of typical heterosexual romance tropes and the reversal or mixing up of gender roles, so feel free to explore as much of that territory as you're inclined to.

An Undone Fairy Tale - Ian Lendler & Whitney Martin
Source description/availability: this is a children’s picture book, still in print, and also available used online for cheap. If your local library stocks U.S. children's picture books, you may find it there as well, as I did. And since it's a picture book, it's really quick to read!

Wonderful meta on story production! Fertile ground for yuletide writers. *Of course* I love that the princess rescues herself, and the kingdom and the knight while she's at it—I also love that the knight stays in his tutu for the duration of the story. Genderbending ass-kicking wonderfulness for all!

I didn’t nominate or request any characters for this fandom, either, because I didn't have a specific story in mind to request and I wanted to give you free rein. You can focus on the world depicted in the story—show me the future adventures of the heroic princess and the tutu-wearing knight (together or separately), or tell me about one of the minor/background characters. You can explore the impact that Ned’s art substitutions have on the story-world, either reveling in the absurdity or taking them seriously as bricks for worldbuilding. You can focus on the narrator and Ned the illustrator, in relation to this story or to others they’ve worked on. Or does the reader have interactions like this with other stories, too? You have carte blanche, and I’m fascinated to see what you might do with it.

And that's it! I hope your Yuletide 2014 is a lovely one. :-)

Yuletide 2024 letter (complete!)

S4S 2024 letter (yeah complete!)

Yuletide 2023 Letter (now complete!)

Fandom Growth Exchange letter

Crossworks letter!

Smut4smut exchange letter (now complete!)

Holly Poly letter (now complete!)

Yuletide letter 2022 (complete!)

Yuletide letter 2021 complete!

Dark Rise by C.S. Pacat

Beautiful Katamari, Chateau Notre Desir (Make Uranus): A Hypothesis

Limited Theatrical Release 2021 letter

Yuletide 2020 letter (now complete!)

Yuletide Letter 2019 (now complete!)

Look! I finally posted fanfiction that has nothing to do with Yuletide!

Yuletide Letter 2018 (Done!)

Yuletide Letter 2017 - in progress!

Yuletide Letter 2016!

Yuletide letter 2015

Yuletide Letter 2014

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