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dearest darlingest yuletide writer,
thank you in advance for taking time to write me a story; anything and everything you write me will be loved and cherished <3
I'm a happy-ending kind of girl. I like stories about people in love, sexual or otherwise - stories where people care for and help one another. It satisfies my idealistic streak. I do love angst, oh do I ever, but I kind of need happy endings afterward. h/c is probably my biggest kink. I'm also really into family-of-choice tropes and stories about strong or passionate emotional intimacy. I like stories about people who mean well, stories about idealists, and stories about the times when that doesn't entirely work out as expected.
I like female characters really a lot. I like non-standard sexualities and imaginative modes of sexual engagement. Similarly, cultural diversity that opens up the imaginative space of the canon makes me seriously happy. There's no reason why kyriarchal/western values, images, mores, or cultural practices need to rule speculative stories that are fairytales or take place in outer space. I like representational biodiversity, including non-neurotypicality and disability. I like history and time and change and context. I like objects and adjectives and rich sensory description.
Um - no character death? Um. I have a humiliation squick, but can be seduced by well-handled shame kink. By no means should you restrict yourself to writing a holidays-specific story for me, though you're welcome to if you want.
requests:
This is a fix-it request - unsurprising given the fandom! I need Will not to be alone after Silver on the Tree, and I need Bran to remember him - but I also have this problem where I can't imagine Will disobeying enough to disenchant him. And what I really really want is a story where there's a something that Will can't handle - a something that requires a king rather than a wizard - and Bran has to put the pieces together in order to save himself/Will/the cosmos/whathaveyou. H/c with victimized!Will would be especially lovely; Drews or other characters are very welcome; slash would be phenomenal, but gen would also be loved and snuggled.
One of the reasons why this fandom really resonates me is that I have Issues about authority and obedience and duty and loneliness and seriousness. I was an overly-serious and solitary child myself, and have struggled as an adult to believe that I'm allowed to have fun, do what's right for me, let go, or need others. I identify heavily with Will, and what I really want from this request is for someone to do what neither he nor I can: undo that horrible ending. It breaks my heart in half, always has, but I share Will's characteristic inability to disobey author(ity) – he can't disobey Merriman, or believe that he might be wrong, and I can't disobey Susan Cooper – and so I need someone else to write this story, because I can't do it even though I want it bad.
I love Bran, but don't always understand him. Will's outlook is much easier for me to access. When I write DiR, it tends to be, yanno, Will angsting unrequitedly and being really fucked up by his situation. But Bran's a hero - the kind of hero, I think, who can fix bad endings. I want his power displayed, expressed, to the end of loving his dewin back. So, idk, Will's the enchanted wizard in the tower, and only the power of the Pendragon can save him. Or the world of men poses more of a threat to wizard-children than previously expected. Or some sort of mythological baddie with a resonance to remembrance or solitude or unrequited love. But Bran as the active force, Will as the receptive partner; Bran as the rebellious hero, Will as the reluctant-but-happy beloved one.
here's my DiR tag, and here's a link to a five-questions meme ramble on DiR I did a while back that might be useful.
Tell me the story of what happens to David after the movie. He's just discovered that Montana either trans* or a transvestite, his career is taking off, and he's got to be going through some stuff. David/Montana would be awesome, but please please please more sensitivity with regard to trans* issues than the movie manages.
My favorite moment in this whole movie is the shot at the very end, after all the reveals, when David meets Montana again. He looks up at her and says, “Milton,” and in a way it could be horribly cissexist but his face and eyes are so open and vulnerable and lovely that it stops my heart. I want to see that moment of sweetness and newness and strangeness and acceptance grow and expand and continue.
One of the problematic parts of the movie is its inability to clarify if Montana/Milton is a transwoman, a transvestite, or a crossdresser. On-camera Rose refers to a sex change clinic, which would indicate Montana as a transwoman, but that is fictionalized for television and I could also totally buy a reading of the film in which Milton remains male-identified but enjoys drag/passing. I'm equally interested in the story about David and Montana-the-transwoman and the one about David-who's-unknowingly-gay and Milton-the-crossdresser, but obviously these stories would be very different, would use pronouns differently, ect. If Montana is a transwoman, for example, I would expect her to correct David there at the end of the movie: no, I used to be Milton, I'm not him anymore.
David's slant from the norm as well: he's this short slight pretty guy who writes for a soap opera, who plays at the edge of the feminine id-vortex for a living, who talks about his therapist and has all these odd quirks. And stories about freaks finding each other, whether they're in love or not, are always win as far as I'm concerned. Even though finding out your crush is trans* and finding out that you're in love with a man are really different experiences/journeys.
Anya-Anastasia/Dmitri powerplay please! They've got this cool noble/servant thing going on that hits my happy worship/service buttons, and I want text instead of subtext.
So there are two bits of Anastasia that really get me going: the moment at the opera when she thinks she's discovered his con, where she shoves and him and ends up slapping him but that begins with him on his knees at her feet looking up with his heart in his eyes, and the moment in the palace (?) when Dmitri bows to Anastasia and calls her “your highness.” Twice. Oh man. He doesn't just love her, he's impressed by her; he's got no problem submitting, and the way he worships her toward the end does it for me like crazy.
The other thing I really like about the movie is the way the ghosts of history cling round its edges, the feeling that fairytales only ended a generation ago, that the past might still be able to rise up and possess the present. A story set in that past, before the fall of the Romanovs, would be cool, as would exploration of either of those two above moments, or powerplay stuff set post-movie. Explicit kink would be awesome, but a more gennish slant on the dynamic would also make me happy as pie. I was going to ask for kink to be loving/consensual/positive, and I would still really like that, but I also just realized that I would be totally on board with a dark!Anastasia au with Dmitri as idk a sex slave or something. Anyway. Ahem.
Character study: Percy Blakeney, mountebank, master of disguise and artifice, a man who contains multitudes and can slip into any role, is the child of a woman described alternately as a madwoman or an imbecile. All actors are lunatics, in their ways; what's connection between Percy's adult penchant for disguised swashbuckling and that childhood with his mother?
Here's what we know about Percy's childhood: his father was distant and heartbroken, and his mother was an imbecile/mad. She looks like he does as an adult, beautiful and passionate, and she was painted by Boucher. It's implied that he was left essentially alone with her, which makes her the major influence in his young life. I want to hear more about how this impacted/formed him: was he her caretaker, was she “mad” by eighteenth-century standards but bipolar or schizophrenic or ADHD by contemporary diagnostic criteria? The history of madness is a fascinating subject and exploration of that would be awesome, as would anything about theatricality and fantasy and identity. Portrait of the hero as a child? Reflection, perhaps directed at Marguerite, on Lady Blakeney's role in shaping the Scarlet Pimpernel? Marguerite's-eye-view of Percy's own inherited tendencies toward instability?
Percy's a hero, but there's also something kind of wrong in him – he's not normal, he does these transgressive and strange things, he voluntarily chooses to live 90% of his life under pretense and pulls it off. And yes these are things that heros do, but if you step out of the melodramatic tropes that frame the novel you've got to wonder a bit about his own sanity. Percy's bent but working it, harnessing his wrongnesses to his purpose, and I want to know how and why and when and where he learned how to do that.
I'm a happy-ending kind of girl. I like stories about people in love, sexual or otherwise - stories where people care for and help one another. It satisfies my idealistic streak. I do love angst, oh do I ever, but I kind of need happy endings afterward. h/c is probably my biggest kink. I'm also really into family-of-choice tropes and stories about strong or passionate emotional intimacy. I like stories about people who mean well, stories about idealists, and stories about the times when that doesn't entirely work out as expected.
I like female characters really a lot. I like non-standard sexualities and imaginative modes of sexual engagement. Similarly, cultural diversity that opens up the imaginative space of the canon makes me seriously happy. There's no reason why kyriarchal/western values, images, mores, or cultural practices need to rule speculative stories that are fairytales or take place in outer space. I like representational biodiversity, including non-neurotypicality and disability. I like history and time and change and context. I like objects and adjectives and rich sensory description.
Um - no character death? Um. I have a humiliation squick, but can be seduced by well-handled shame kink. By no means should you restrict yourself to writing a holidays-specific story for me, though you're welcome to if you want.
requests:
This is a fix-it request - unsurprising given the fandom! I need Will not to be alone after Silver on the Tree, and I need Bran to remember him - but I also have this problem where I can't imagine Will disobeying enough to disenchant him. And what I really really want is a story where there's a something that Will can't handle - a something that requires a king rather than a wizard - and Bran has to put the pieces together in order to save himself/Will/the cosmos/whathaveyou. H/c with victimized!Will would be especially lovely; Drews or other characters are very welcome; slash would be phenomenal, but gen would also be loved and snuggled.
One of the reasons why this fandom really resonates me is that I have Issues about authority and obedience and duty and loneliness and seriousness. I was an overly-serious and solitary child myself, and have struggled as an adult to believe that I'm allowed to have fun, do what's right for me, let go, or need others. I identify heavily with Will, and what I really want from this request is for someone to do what neither he nor I can: undo that horrible ending. It breaks my heart in half, always has, but I share Will's characteristic inability to disobey author(ity) – he can't disobey Merriman, or believe that he might be wrong, and I can't disobey Susan Cooper – and so I need someone else to write this story, because I can't do it even though I want it bad.
I love Bran, but don't always understand him. Will's outlook is much easier for me to access. When I write DiR, it tends to be, yanno, Will angsting unrequitedly and being really fucked up by his situation. But Bran's a hero - the kind of hero, I think, who can fix bad endings. I want his power displayed, expressed, to the end of loving his dewin back. So, idk, Will's the enchanted wizard in the tower, and only the power of the Pendragon can save him. Or the world of men poses more of a threat to wizard-children than previously expected. Or some sort of mythological baddie with a resonance to remembrance or solitude or unrequited love. But Bran as the active force, Will as the receptive partner; Bran as the rebellious hero, Will as the reluctant-but-happy beloved one.
here's my DiR tag, and here's a link to a five-questions meme ramble on DiR I did a while back that might be useful.
Tell me the story of what happens to David after the movie. He's just discovered that Montana either trans* or a transvestite, his career is taking off, and he's got to be going through some stuff. David/Montana would be awesome, but please please please more sensitivity with regard to trans* issues than the movie manages.
My favorite moment in this whole movie is the shot at the very end, after all the reveals, when David meets Montana again. He looks up at her and says, “Milton,” and in a way it could be horribly cissexist but his face and eyes are so open and vulnerable and lovely that it stops my heart. I want to see that moment of sweetness and newness and strangeness and acceptance grow and expand and continue.
One of the problematic parts of the movie is its inability to clarify if Montana/Milton is a transwoman, a transvestite, or a crossdresser. On-camera Rose refers to a sex change clinic, which would indicate Montana as a transwoman, but that is fictionalized for television and I could also totally buy a reading of the film in which Milton remains male-identified but enjoys drag/passing. I'm equally interested in the story about David and Montana-the-transwoman and the one about David-who's-unknowingly-gay and Milton-the-crossdresser, but obviously these stories would be very different, would use pronouns differently, ect. If Montana is a transwoman, for example, I would expect her to correct David there at the end of the movie: no, I used to be Milton, I'm not him anymore.
David's slant from the norm as well: he's this short slight pretty guy who writes for a soap opera, who plays at the edge of the feminine id-vortex for a living, who talks about his therapist and has all these odd quirks. And stories about freaks finding each other, whether they're in love or not, are always win as far as I'm concerned. Even though finding out your crush is trans* and finding out that you're in love with a man are really different experiences/journeys.
Anya-Anastasia/Dmitri powerplay please! They've got this cool noble/servant thing going on that hits my happy worship/service buttons, and I want text instead of subtext.
So there are two bits of Anastasia that really get me going: the moment at the opera when she thinks she's discovered his con, where she shoves and him and ends up slapping him but that begins with him on his knees at her feet looking up with his heart in his eyes, and the moment in the palace (?) when Dmitri bows to Anastasia and calls her “your highness.” Twice. Oh man. He doesn't just love her, he's impressed by her; he's got no problem submitting, and the way he worships her toward the end does it for me like crazy.
The other thing I really like about the movie is the way the ghosts of history cling round its edges, the feeling that fairytales only ended a generation ago, that the past might still be able to rise up and possess the present. A story set in that past, before the fall of the Romanovs, would be cool, as would exploration of either of those two above moments, or powerplay stuff set post-movie. Explicit kink would be awesome, but a more gennish slant on the dynamic would also make me happy as pie. I was going to ask for kink to be loving/consensual/positive, and I would still really like that, but I also just realized that I would be totally on board with a dark!Anastasia au with Dmitri as idk a sex slave or something. Anyway. Ahem.
Character study: Percy Blakeney, mountebank, master of disguise and artifice, a man who contains multitudes and can slip into any role, is the child of a woman described alternately as a madwoman or an imbecile. All actors are lunatics, in their ways; what's connection between Percy's adult penchant for disguised swashbuckling and that childhood with his mother?
Here's what we know about Percy's childhood: his father was distant and heartbroken, and his mother was an imbecile/mad. She looks like he does as an adult, beautiful and passionate, and she was painted by Boucher. It's implied that he was left essentially alone with her, which makes her the major influence in his young life. I want to hear more about how this impacted/formed him: was he her caretaker, was she “mad” by eighteenth-century standards but bipolar or schizophrenic or ADHD by contemporary diagnostic criteria? The history of madness is a fascinating subject and exploration of that would be awesome, as would anything about theatricality and fantasy and identity. Portrait of the hero as a child? Reflection, perhaps directed at Marguerite, on Lady Blakeney's role in shaping the Scarlet Pimpernel? Marguerite's-eye-view of Percy's own inherited tendencies toward instability?
Percy's a hero, but there's also something kind of wrong in him – he's not normal, he does these transgressive and strange things, he voluntarily chooses to live 90% of his life under pretense and pulls it off. And yes these are things that heros do, but if you step out of the melodramatic tropes that frame the novel you've got to wonder a bit about his own sanity. Percy's bent but working it, harnessing his wrongnesses to his purpose, and I want to know how and why and when and where he learned how to do that.
no subject
I'm on board with 2 of your 3, here.
The ending of TDiR upsets me so much-everything they achieved, separately and together, everything they learned, just wiped out because it was convenient for the Light. The mortals will all die soon enough, comparatively speaking; so why couldn't Will have the comfort of their knowing friendship, or any chance at more, while it lasted? I love fics where they all start remembering on their own.
As far as Percy's mother's madness goes, it could have been any of the diagnoses you've noted; it could even been just an excitable nature or not wanting to follow conventions, given how mannered their social world was. "Mad" was an easy label to slap on anyone. Still, he hides in plain sight far too well for it to be something he picked up in adulthood, and recently.
I love happy endings, too, but I find them easier to believe in for SP more than for TDiR. I hope you get some wonderful fics for your requests!
no subject
I feel like there's a trend in a lot of children's literature that makes magic/adventures the opposite of growing up, so you get a lot of "you have to leave Narnia/forget the Old Ones/stop flying off to Neverland if you want to grow up" stories. And I just - I believe that less and less every year I get older. Because I'm pretty much a grownup at this point, but I still want to go to Narnia as badly as I ever did - and I don't think I'm any less likely to get there now than I was when I was nine.