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thefourthvine) wrote2017-10-03 03:45 pm
thefourthvine) wrote2017-10-03 03:45 pm
Entry tags:
Yuletide 2017: Dear Writer
Dear Writer Person,
Hi!
I am, as always, going to provide you with all the details, because that's what I hope to get from my recipient. But if details aren't your thing, please tap out of this letter now. Just know that I really, really cannot handle child or animal harm or death, and I love you for volunteering to write in one of these tiny fandoms. See you on the 25th!
Or, if you want to know more, read on.
Me
I love so many things! Here is a small sample:
So that's the general stuff. Let's talk fandoms.
Basketball RPF, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Larry Bird
Request: I -- genuinely think Magic Johnson and Larry Bird might have soulbonded at the NCAA Championship in 1979. They certainly went from zero to intense, eternal focus pretty damn quickly. So what I want to know is -- what happened? Where did it go from there? How does that work, when you're playing against each other, when one of you doesn't even LIKE the other, when you're such incredibly different human beings?
If you go with the actual soulbond, there are lots of interesting possibilities here - Larry fighting the bond, the way it affected them and their game, how it drove them to play. Or you could talk about how they finally accepted the soulbond and what it's like now, being comfortable with it and each other, years after the fighting and the struggle finally ended. Just, anything.
And if you take the non-soulbond route (which is of course entirely welcome; this definitely doesn't have to be a literal soulbond), just what IS going on? They have SOME kind of bond, that much is clear, and I'd love to hear what it's like: forever friendship, repeating reincarnation as people obsessed with each other, multiverse-spanning romance, whatever. I just want more about this intense *thing* they have going.
I'm good with gen, slash, and poly. Just please no straight-up infidelity. There's always gen, or unmarried AUs, or setting the sex before the marriage, or spousal knowledge and consent (my favorite!), or spousal involvement. Or something else you come up with! LET THE MAGIC (hee!) OF BIRD AND JOHNSON GUIDE YOU, basically.
Okay, I am a trifle concerned that my request makes me sound like an exceptionally weird tinhat. No! No! I am merely reporting the truth, which is that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird appear to have a real-life soulbond!
...That didn't help my case. But I have solid evidence. The documentary A Courtship of Rivals (YouTube link to full documentary, but you only need to watch the first ten minutes to see the literal discussion of the soulbond) could not be clearer. These guys are bonded in some way. And I just find that fascinating. You could not have two more different people (unless, like, one of them was a Vulcan - SHUSH NO WRONG FANDOM). You could not have a more intense rivalry. And yet it's abundantly clear they have a ton of respect for each other, a ton of very genuine love for each other, and they know each other so well - every appearance I've ever seen them in has just been so great for that. We have Magic, dude who loves people, hugs, and fame, and Larry, dude whose basic approach to life is "go away and leave me alone because I have a lot of very important scowling to do," and they love each other, and that is the greatest thing to me.
Basically, I adore these guys. And I am riveted by their great and weird relationship. Anything you write about them navigating that relationship while being their extremely awesome selves will be wonderful.
And if you're up for pairing fic, I would love that, any rating.
To pick this fandom up, watch that documentary. Marvel at its dedication to pushing the soulbond storyline!
Jazz Age Writer RPF, Ernest Hemingway/F. Scott Fitzgerald
Request: Okay, so, look. Both of these guys were assholes. Assholes who were very weird about each other, over a long period of time, first as friends, then as bitter rivals. And they were both obsessed with masculinity, in different ways, and terrified that they were not sufficiently Manly Men with Extra Man. And they spent a lot of time thinking about each other, and about each other’s dicks, and about whether the other dude was truly a Manly Man with Extra Man; more than you would expect, maybe, for two completely straight dudes who were once friends but now for some reason stomp out of the room whenever the other is mentioned. So I am merely following in the footsteps of approximately one million scholars when I say: hey, maybe they banged. They sure seem like they wanted to. It’d explain a lot.
I would love it if you could take all this subtext and make it, you know, text. With all of their weirdnesses and fears and desires and obsessions, I think it’d be a fucked-up delight to read about.
So. Aspiring author Hemingway trading a handjob for a hand up from noted author Fitzgerald? Sure. Uncomfortably attracted, uncomfortable friends exchanging sex tips and blowjobs because, hey, it’s Paris? Yes, please. Late-in-life, disintegrating Fitzgerald trying to revive himself by drinking from the well of Hemingway’s Certified Literary Genius? Excellent. Or anything in between.
Obviously, I’m hoping for slash in this one.
So. If you signed up for this fandom, you already know this, but if you didn’t, please join me in marveling at this delightful fact: Hemingway claims that he once inspected Fitzgerald’s dick (in a men’s room, no less), with a view to making sure he could please a woman. (Because Hemingway knew a lot about dicks, I guess? He for sure was not an expert at pleasing women.) So maybe that happened, or maybe Hemingway just wished it had. And thought about it a lot. Imagined how it might have gone. You know, when he couldn’t sleep or whatever. Whether it happened or not, this anecdote is a textbook example of the delightfully messed-up relationship of these dudes. (You can read ol’ Ernest’s description of the alleged incident, along with a lot of fascinating discussion, at the New Yorker, where they know how to come to grips with the important issues of the day, like Hemingway and Fitzgerald really wanting to bang each other and maybe, just maybe, getting it on in a Paris bathroom.)
I would love to read more about this messed-up relationship – about these two dudes wanting each other and thinking about each other and being weird about each other. And I’d love to read something that takes their insecurities and fears and kind of – drags them into the light. (Whether they’re helped or made worse by this is up to you.)
And also, of course, I’m hoping they bang.
If you want to pick up this fandom – well, there’s A Moveable Feast, which is Hemingway at his most readable, being insufferable and reminiscing about his glory days in a classic work of dicklit. And there’s Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald, by Scott Donaldson, which isn’t exactly breaking new ground, but does provide a thorough, gossipy look at the relationship between these two men. (Donaldson blames Hemingway. For everything. My feeling is that there’s enough blame to go around, here.)
Historical Farm (UK TV), Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn
Request: I’d love to read about these three actually traveling in time. I can think of few people more ready, more willing, and more able, and honestly it seems like a dream they all share. How does it work? When do they go to? Do they like it? Did they volunteer, or was it an accident? Are they stuck there, or do they know how to get back? How do their relationships – both to each other and to history – change, once they’re doing this stuff for real? What’s it like for them, to know they can’t just take off the clothes and go back to the modern era at the end of the day?
If you’re up for a crossover or fusion, Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel universe seems like an obvious choice – you could write about their youthful adventures as time-traveling historians, or about them as older, more experienced historians, maybe dealing with a net crisis or rescuing historians in trouble.
I’d be delighted with either gen or ship fic, here. Also, feel free to add in, or sub out, Tom Pinfold, or to include other characters from the series as you choose – maybe Ruth’s daughter gets stuck back in time with them, or Professor Ronald Hutton shows up somehow, as he always seems to.
However it goes, I’m definitely hoping for a happy ending here.
I dove back into these series this year, watching or re-watching everything, because, honestly, I needed some escapism from 2017, and Ruth, Alex, Peter (and/or Tom) are the perfect people to provide that. And so, inevitably, I started wondering how they’d feel if they really and truly escaped 2017, and that led to me requesting this series again, even though I got perfectly wonderful fics for it the last time. Can there ever be enough Historical Farm fic? (No.)
I love these series, and the people are what makes them all work. I love Ruth because she clearly loves the people of the past without romanticizing them, and because she's so fucking competent. I love watching her master old cooking equipment and make old recipes without either a "tee-hee, people ate such gross stuff!" or a "the Glorious Wisdom of the Past" tone. I love seeing her grimly haul herself out of bed in the dark to get the range going, or her sort of "I have no idea how I'm going to manage this, but I'm for sure going to manage it" attitude when she sees their new home at the start of a series.
I love the guys because they are sort of the bumbling, enthusiastic adolescent Labrador Retrievers of the farm. I love watching them get better at farming and stock-keeping over time, and develop their interests (like Alex's slightly weird love of chickens), and I also love watching them try hard and totally screw up, which shows just how difficult this shit really is. I love how Peter is incapable of doing anything without getting dirty, and how Alex is the worrywart of the group, always fretting over the harvest and the weather and the livestock.
I love how all three of them interact – helping each other, talking and eating together, enjoying each other’s company, being a slightly non-traditional family. And I love this view of the past, where we get a chance to see what it was like -- not through a rose-tinted lens, or focusing on the life lived by the luckiest 1%, but just. The ordinary lives of ordinary people, but in a different time and place.
Also, if you want to write slash, let me just note that in Wartime Farm, Alex and Peter apparently shared a room, in case that's a helpful detail.
(DNW note: this is a farming series. Obviously, a lot of animal death occurs, because it's a farm. If you could keep it off the page as much possible, I would greatly appreciate it, but if you've got them eating their own sheep or whatever, or some tension about if an animal is going to make it (and it does), that's fine.)
To pick up this series, click on one of these links and then just keep on. Be riveted by the magic of historical farming!
Edwardian Farm, episode 1.
Tudor Monastery Farm, episode 1.
Wartime Farm, episode 1.
Victorian Farm, episode 1.
Bonuses:
Tales from the Green Valley playlist. (This is the pilot and fun, but it's older and not like the others.)
Secrets of the Castle, episode 1. (Not a farm, but still fun. Unfortunately, the one I watched is no longer up, and this upload isn't great quality. Sorry!)
Full Steam Ahead, episode 1. (This is their latest series, and it’s about the development of the railway in the UK. It’s not a farm, and they’re not always in period clothing or doing period things, but it’s still fun. And Alex is back!)
Hi!
I am, as always, going to provide you with all the details, because that's what I hope to get from my recipient. But if details aren't your thing, please tap out of this letter now. Just know that I really, really cannot handle child or animal harm or death, and I love you for volunteering to write in one of these tiny fandoms. See you on the 25th!
Or, if you want to know more, read on.
Me
I love so many things! Here is a small sample:
- Happy endings. (Um, I mean of the everyone lives happily ever after kind. Although I am also a big fan of orgasms, not gonna lie.)
- Humor.
- Slow burn romances and slow build sex scenes.
- Action and adventure.
- Snappy dialogue.
- Classic fan fiction tropes, whether played straight or inverted. (Soulbonds! Werewolves! Bodyswap! Arranged marriages! Fake dating! Amnesia! And so on.)
- Families (found, biological, synthetic, hologrammatic, whatever) being good to each other.
- Robots, spaceships, aliens, space opera, military science fiction.
- Urban fantasy, magical politics, dryads in backwards Dodgers caps, parking spells, secret libraries full of Starbucks-sipping, bluetooth-headset-wearing magical theory students.
- People who have problems with feelings.
- Animal and child harm or death. These are my only deal-breaker squicks; I can't handle them at all.
- Embarrassment and humiliation.
- Rape.
- The abuse of women.
- Infidelity.
- Zombies or cannibalism.
- Character death or characters with cancer.
- Pairings with big power imbalances -- teacher/student, doctor/patient, huge age gaps, etc -- or a male/female power imbalance with the woman on the less powerful end.
- Unhappy endings.
So that's the general stuff. Let's talk fandoms.
Basketball RPF, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Larry Bird
Request: I -- genuinely think Magic Johnson and Larry Bird might have soulbonded at the NCAA Championship in 1979. They certainly went from zero to intense, eternal focus pretty damn quickly. So what I want to know is -- what happened? Where did it go from there? How does that work, when you're playing against each other, when one of you doesn't even LIKE the other, when you're such incredibly different human beings?
If you go with the actual soulbond, there are lots of interesting possibilities here - Larry fighting the bond, the way it affected them and their game, how it drove them to play. Or you could talk about how they finally accepted the soulbond and what it's like now, being comfortable with it and each other, years after the fighting and the struggle finally ended. Just, anything.
And if you take the non-soulbond route (which is of course entirely welcome; this definitely doesn't have to be a literal soulbond), just what IS going on? They have SOME kind of bond, that much is clear, and I'd love to hear what it's like: forever friendship, repeating reincarnation as people obsessed with each other, multiverse-spanning romance, whatever. I just want more about this intense *thing* they have going.
I'm good with gen, slash, and poly. Just please no straight-up infidelity. There's always gen, or unmarried AUs, or setting the sex before the marriage, or spousal knowledge and consent (my favorite!), or spousal involvement. Or something else you come up with! LET THE MAGIC (hee!) OF BIRD AND JOHNSON GUIDE YOU, basically.
Okay, I am a trifle concerned that my request makes me sound like an exceptionally weird tinhat. No! No! I am merely reporting the truth, which is that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird appear to have a real-life soulbond!
...That didn't help my case. But I have solid evidence. The documentary A Courtship of Rivals (YouTube link to full documentary, but you only need to watch the first ten minutes to see the literal discussion of the soulbond) could not be clearer. These guys are bonded in some way. And I just find that fascinating. You could not have two more different people (unless, like, one of them was a Vulcan - SHUSH NO WRONG FANDOM). You could not have a more intense rivalry. And yet it's abundantly clear they have a ton of respect for each other, a ton of very genuine love for each other, and they know each other so well - every appearance I've ever seen them in has just been so great for that. We have Magic, dude who loves people, hugs, and fame, and Larry, dude whose basic approach to life is "go away and leave me alone because I have a lot of very important scowling to do," and they love each other, and that is the greatest thing to me.
Basically, I adore these guys. And I am riveted by their great and weird relationship. Anything you write about them navigating that relationship while being their extremely awesome selves will be wonderful.
And if you're up for pairing fic, I would love that, any rating.
To pick this fandom up, watch that documentary. Marvel at its dedication to pushing the soulbond storyline!
Jazz Age Writer RPF, Ernest Hemingway/F. Scott Fitzgerald
Request: Okay, so, look. Both of these guys were assholes. Assholes who were very weird about each other, over a long period of time, first as friends, then as bitter rivals. And they were both obsessed with masculinity, in different ways, and terrified that they were not sufficiently Manly Men with Extra Man. And they spent a lot of time thinking about each other, and about each other’s dicks, and about whether the other dude was truly a Manly Man with Extra Man; more than you would expect, maybe, for two completely straight dudes who were once friends but now for some reason stomp out of the room whenever the other is mentioned. So I am merely following in the footsteps of approximately one million scholars when I say: hey, maybe they banged. They sure seem like they wanted to. It’d explain a lot.
I would love it if you could take all this subtext and make it, you know, text. With all of their weirdnesses and fears and desires and obsessions, I think it’d be a fucked-up delight to read about.
So. Aspiring author Hemingway trading a handjob for a hand up from noted author Fitzgerald? Sure. Uncomfortably attracted, uncomfortable friends exchanging sex tips and blowjobs because, hey, it’s Paris? Yes, please. Late-in-life, disintegrating Fitzgerald trying to revive himself by drinking from the well of Hemingway’s Certified Literary Genius? Excellent. Or anything in between.
Obviously, I’m hoping for slash in this one.
So. If you signed up for this fandom, you already know this, but if you didn’t, please join me in marveling at this delightful fact: Hemingway claims that he once inspected Fitzgerald’s dick (in a men’s room, no less), with a view to making sure he could please a woman. (Because Hemingway knew a lot about dicks, I guess? He for sure was not an expert at pleasing women.) So maybe that happened, or maybe Hemingway just wished it had. And thought about it a lot. Imagined how it might have gone. You know, when he couldn’t sleep or whatever. Whether it happened or not, this anecdote is a textbook example of the delightfully messed-up relationship of these dudes. (You can read ol’ Ernest’s description of the alleged incident, along with a lot of fascinating discussion, at the New Yorker, where they know how to come to grips with the important issues of the day, like Hemingway and Fitzgerald really wanting to bang each other and maybe, just maybe, getting it on in a Paris bathroom.)
I would love to read more about this messed-up relationship – about these two dudes wanting each other and thinking about each other and being weird about each other. And I’d love to read something that takes their insecurities and fears and kind of – drags them into the light. (Whether they’re helped or made worse by this is up to you.)
And also, of course, I’m hoping they bang.
If you want to pick up this fandom – well, there’s A Moveable Feast, which is Hemingway at his most readable, being insufferable and reminiscing about his glory days in a classic work of dicklit. And there’s Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald, by Scott Donaldson, which isn’t exactly breaking new ground, but does provide a thorough, gossipy look at the relationship between these two men. (Donaldson blames Hemingway. For everything. My feeling is that there’s enough blame to go around, here.)
Historical Farm (UK TV), Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn
Request: I’d love to read about these three actually traveling in time. I can think of few people more ready, more willing, and more able, and honestly it seems like a dream they all share. How does it work? When do they go to? Do they like it? Did they volunteer, or was it an accident? Are they stuck there, or do they know how to get back? How do their relationships – both to each other and to history – change, once they’re doing this stuff for real? What’s it like for them, to know they can’t just take off the clothes and go back to the modern era at the end of the day?
If you’re up for a crossover or fusion, Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel universe seems like an obvious choice – you could write about their youthful adventures as time-traveling historians, or about them as older, more experienced historians, maybe dealing with a net crisis or rescuing historians in trouble.
I’d be delighted with either gen or ship fic, here. Also, feel free to add in, or sub out, Tom Pinfold, or to include other characters from the series as you choose – maybe Ruth’s daughter gets stuck back in time with them, or Professor Ronald Hutton shows up somehow, as he always seems to.
However it goes, I’m definitely hoping for a happy ending here.
I dove back into these series this year, watching or re-watching everything, because, honestly, I needed some escapism from 2017, and Ruth, Alex, Peter (and/or Tom) are the perfect people to provide that. And so, inevitably, I started wondering how they’d feel if they really and truly escaped 2017, and that led to me requesting this series again, even though I got perfectly wonderful fics for it the last time. Can there ever be enough Historical Farm fic? (No.)
I love these series, and the people are what makes them all work. I love Ruth because she clearly loves the people of the past without romanticizing them, and because she's so fucking competent. I love watching her master old cooking equipment and make old recipes without either a "tee-hee, people ate such gross stuff!" or a "the Glorious Wisdom of the Past" tone. I love seeing her grimly haul herself out of bed in the dark to get the range going, or her sort of "I have no idea how I'm going to manage this, but I'm for sure going to manage it" attitude when she sees their new home at the start of a series.
I love the guys because they are sort of the bumbling, enthusiastic adolescent Labrador Retrievers of the farm. I love watching them get better at farming and stock-keeping over time, and develop their interests (like Alex's slightly weird love of chickens), and I also love watching them try hard and totally screw up, which shows just how difficult this shit really is. I love how Peter is incapable of doing anything without getting dirty, and how Alex is the worrywart of the group, always fretting over the harvest and the weather and the livestock.
I love how all three of them interact – helping each other, talking and eating together, enjoying each other’s company, being a slightly non-traditional family. And I love this view of the past, where we get a chance to see what it was like -- not through a rose-tinted lens, or focusing on the life lived by the luckiest 1%, but just. The ordinary lives of ordinary people, but in a different time and place.
Also, if you want to write slash, let me just note that in Wartime Farm, Alex and Peter apparently shared a room, in case that's a helpful detail.
(DNW note: this is a farming series. Obviously, a lot of animal death occurs, because it's a farm. If you could keep it off the page as much possible, I would greatly appreciate it, but if you've got them eating their own sheep or whatever, or some tension about if an animal is going to make it (and it does), that's fine.)
To pick up this series, click on one of these links and then just keep on. Be riveted by the magic of historical farming!
Edwardian Farm, episode 1.
Tudor Monastery Farm, episode 1.
Wartime Farm, episode 1.
Victorian Farm, episode 1.
Bonuses:
Tales from the Green Valley playlist. (This is the pilot and fun, but it's older and not like the others.)
Secrets of the Castle, episode 1. (Not a farm, but still fun. Unfortunately, the one I watched is no longer up, and this upload isn't great quality. Sorry!)
Full Steam Ahead, episode 1. (This is their latest series, and it’s about the development of the railway in the UK. It’s not a farm, and they’re not always in period clothing or doing period things, but it’s still fun. And Alex is back!)