insert jingling sleigh bells here

myrishswamp — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 17:12:31 GMT

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Happy Yuletide! I hope that, wherever you are, you are stoked to get matched up with one of these fandoms. If you’re not and you’re worried that no inspiration will strike, please know that whatever you feel up to writing will be just fine by me. Just have fun, that’s my only request. This is only my second Yuletide and I am so excited to be participating again this year.

This letter has no real prompts in it, just lots of talking about the things I like best about my requested fandoms and some ideas of things to write. I hope you get some inspiration from it, that’s all it’s here for!

If you want to know a little more about me, you can check out my heinously disorganised Tumblr. My life tends to focus around medieval kings and queens (the URL is a dead giveaway), shouting about how important the Middle Ages are, thinking about fictional time-travelers (it’s a whole thing…), and, honestly, a lot of what’s below the cut.

As a general rule, I like: people-as-communities, found families, female friendships, trash-heap princes and valiant young women, backstories, college stories, film noir aus, awkward virgins in literature, deftly-applied smut, bittersweet endings.

Dislikes: abuse, non-con, misogyny, coffee shop aus, and tbh, I’m not big on fluff (of shipping variety; it’s not a deal breaker by any means but, eh, i like ‘em either tentative or angsting) unless its ultimate goal is to be funny.

Anyway, here goes nothing!

The 100 (Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake, Raven Reyes, Wells Jaha):

I must inform you, dear writer, that I belong to that vein of the fandom. You know, the one that won’t quit shrieking about Clarke/Bellamy. Not that I can’t get shippy about the rest (Clarke/Raven, um, hello, ‘I’d pick you first’ ; and Raven/Bellamy, too, as two hurt, unloved, but loving people seeking a warm body to lie next to.), but that’s where I live mostly. She’s a reluctant princess. He idolises Emperor Augustus. I mean… how can you not?

This show is one of my favourites on at the moment. It’s genuine, quality entertainment from the network that brought you Hellcats and I just about died when they played Radiohead’s ‘Exit Music (For a Film)’ at the end of the first season.

Since I started watching this show, I’ve been totally amused by how smart the CW have been about rectifying their grown-ups problem. On most of their shows they seem to unenthusiastically spin second-rate scandals and drama along for all the hot teenagers’ parents, but, on The 100, they can delete completely the idea of parental boundaries and solve that issue by sticking all the adults on their own spaceship and letting them slowly run out of oxygen (you know, up until Season 2. I’m so excited for this season). But anyway, it’s made me so curious about the state of the human race in this show.

I mean, really, how did it get so bad? 97 years in space and there are only 2000 people left in that multiethnic dystopian tin-can? Jaha, man, what happened? Anyway, since the beginning of the show and as the Ark plot got more ridiculous, I’ve been dying for some sort of explanation. And I’ve been tempted to think that the world of “Zenon, Girl of the 21st Century” ultimately devolved into what we’ve got left on The 100.

If you find the idea of that crossover as funny as me then, by all means, do take a crack.

I adore the community world set up on the ground. It’s more Lost Boys than Lord of the Flies, and there are real and true leaders in the fore. I wish Wells hadn’t died. He, Clarke, Raven and Bellamy could have led a kingdom between them. I want that. (Also, and this is only semi-serious: I want to know — because the CW has this bizarre standard that all its teenagers be sexually liberated from the word go — when and how did all these imprisoned seventeen year olds even lose their virginities? I mean… even floor-baby Octavia? What?)

But there is so much to play with with this show, especially now that new environments are in play. There’s space. There’s the woods. And now there’s Mount Weather. This show plays with absolutes and its characters can afford to be absolutist too.

For instance: the greatest thing about The 100 - for me - is its capacity for A Midsummer Night’s Dream metaphors. And, oh, hey, speaking of…

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Helena, Hermia, Demetrius, Lysander):

Another thing about teenagers going wild in the forest! I have a type!

Okay so… this one is a doozy.

Midsummer is my favourite Shakespeare play. I rail against its cultural legacy as the fun, cute play about fairies but, most often, I’m standing up on that soapbox shouting at an audience of none. But if you are so inclined, here is my (very messy) Tumblr tag on the subject.

Here’s what I care about in Midsummer: the young lovers. Here’s why I care: about three years ago, I bet my academic credit on the idea that Midsummer was inspired by Renaissance Neoplatonist views about love (however it is won) as an agent of social and personal prosperity, and I can’t quite bring myself to leave the betting table.

Anyway. I love this play. I love that it’s a messy story about messy creatures. I love its social history — that it is the story of a community that has come through a war, into a shaky accord, and brought to peace and optimism in the course of a single night — and its silly half-baked characters, who are just emerging from their chrysalese and becoming real actual people right when the action comes to a close. And I love Helena — histrionic, sexually hungry, semi-divine Helena, hunting her shithead boyfriend through the forest — the MOST.

There is really so little history spelled out for us in the play itself and so much there to be invented and played with. If you are feeling ambitious enough to tell me the story of the war and the young lovers places in it, or how they came to their situation at the beginning of the play, I would be the happiest camper in the whole trailer park.

Other, simpler, more cracky ideas, however, include: WEREWOLF AU (someone wrote me a treat of this last year and it was so good that I just have to ask for more), college au, BALLROOM DANCING AU (Helena’s partner left her because she was too tall; Hermia is small enough for illegal lifts but if she doesn’t win that trophy this year, her father’s sending her away to boarding school, etc, etc.). Honestly, anything Midsummer. I love Midsummer so much. I love anything that has to do with it. I’m trash, I’m trash, I know.

Caprica (Zoe Graystone, Tamara Adama):

So these two are on my list of top ten favourite characters ever. Zoe Graystone, especially, is deeply important to me. I think I would struggle to tell you exactly why, however. She’s a girl. She’s a brat. She’s a genius. She’s a metal killing machine. She’s an angel. She’s a god. She’s Frankenstein and the monster. She’s robot Eve. She’s life itself. Ah, my girl <3

If you are here because of Caprica, then you know the great pain of a series cut through when it was not even yet in its prime! There is SO MUCH left to be said in the Caprica story. First and foremost: THE V-WORLD. It belongs to two virtual teenagers. It is the only place where they can be real, and they can rule and arrange it as they please. What kind of worlds could they make? What can Tamara do that Zoe can’t? What do they fight about? What does each of them bring to the creation of an unearthly paradise?

(Hopefully, you didn’t notice how I just stuck another ‘teenagers in the wilderness’ prompt right by you…)

Veep (Amy Brookheimer, Dan Egan):

This one is not about teenagers in forests!

It’s hard to wax lyrical too long on these two because they’re such wholly-realised assholes that there’s little left to wonder. Except when are they gonna fuck?

Gimme some history, maybe. Or, else, gimme some of the au classics. Secretly dating. Fake dating. Fake married. Secretly Vegas married. Fake fake dating to get info out of each other. Selina wins the election so they victory-bone and have to deal with the hangovers (and the press) in the morning.

...and that’s it! You’re free! Have fun this year and I guess you will be hearing for me after Christmas! Thank you so much again :)

xxx

yuletide reveals!

myrishswamp — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 12:44:58 GMT

1/many new year's resolutions this time around is to make better use of this thingy. i ended up doing a read through of my personal annus horribilis (2007) the other night which was both enlightening and emotional (not that i was writing much that was thought provoking), but it did bring home the point that keeping a record - even if it's a sketchy record - of the passing years can be a helpful thing to do at such times as these.

so in that vein, here's a yuletide round up!

this was my first ever yuletide and i had aimed to write lots of treats, originally, but then my main gift sort of... was terrible, so i rewrote it several times over and was typing up to the last minute of the deadline. i've learned for next year that that's not the way to do it.

anyway, reveals are out, so i shall link to mine. people seem to like it, so that is always nice to hear! many thanks to michele for doing an early boringness-reading and beta.

witch oil; (his dark materials series); g, 7k - the story of ma costa & a gyptian's view of the world (when there was still just the one to worry about)

There’s a gentle practice in deceiving one’s own child in order to stay his questions (and an even gentler one when it comes to raising someone else’s child), the same way there’s a poetry to learning, at a point, that one’s own parents were occasionally full of shit.

in turn, i received two totally beautiful gifts. my main one being the utterly lovely winter stars (g), about apollo, artemis and the death of orion, which i can't stop reading, and a midsummer night's dream treat, the wildest hath not such a heart as you (m), which i'm obsessed with currently. (it's the werewolf au, guys. someone did the werewolf au!!!)

all in all, it was a really fulfilling way to cap off the year - and, to be honest, it's really made me eager to write again. i'll definitely be in it for next year. i almost can't wait :)

(in other unlikely news: i may try and rewrite enough of this year's nanowrimo to enter into a writing competition in february. standby for wobbles of confidence.)

myrishswamp — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:33:35 GMT

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the lunatic, the lover, and the poet

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yuletide reveals!

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