Entry tags:
2024 Yuletide Letter
Here is my 2024 yuletide letter, in its final form! Text below the cuts is the content of my signup.
I am one of those people who comes to Yuletide mostly just wanting any fic for my small fandoms, so I'm really wide open about what you write for me. I will never be upset with ODAO as long as you write me the story you really wanted to write and that comes through, so if you saw one of these fandoms or characters in the tagset and immediately knew the story you wish there was a prompt for, write me that one instead.
I put a couple of fandom-specific DNWs in the signup but I don't really have any general ones, and I really did think that through. If the characters and the canon and the story you're writing cry out for something, I opt in even if it's something that's a common DNW (just tag for it if I might need to brace myself).
I like crossovers (I didn't prompt many this year, but an Aubrey/Maturin - Mairelon crossover would be amazing, so would Mairelon - Goblins in the Castle, or Scipio and Hannibal meeting characters from other fandoms/elsewhere in history, or any universe overlapping with Maupin, or anything else that strikes your fancy), I like setting-swap AUs that are interested in what the canon and the new setting have to say about each other, I like unusual prose formats and POVs and I like non-text treats or mixed media stories. (I allow treats.) I have a lot of other likes too, and perhaps I will edit this letter to add some more? If I don't get to that before you see this, this tag has my yuletide posts going back to 2003 and feel free to mine those for old likes! Some of my likes also come through in my prompts, and if you see something in a prompt for one fandom that you'd rather apply to another, go for it.
This year's "completely unintentional theme" is historical settings, so here we are in vaguely chronological order:
Symposium - Plato, Punic Wars RPF, Mademoiselle de Maupin - Théophile Gautier, Goblins in the Castle - Bruce Coville, Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede
Plato's Symposium is one of the Socratic Dialogues, possibly one of the most analyzed, discussed, and relitigated works in all of history. It's wildly important to queer/LGBT history as well, with some of the most detailed discussion of male/male relationships in the ancient world that echoed up through the next thousand+ years of European thought. But it's also basically an RPS story about a bunch of famous people Plato knew when he was younger hanging out, getting drunk, and talking about gay shipping, having a good time before all the tragedy that befell them later. If you've heard people talk about the ancient arguments over whether Achilles topped - that's in here. (There's a theory that this was published as an advertisement for Plato's later Academy, by showing it as a place where you get to hang out with your frat bros, meet famous people, have fun and talk philosophy, and it definitely makes sense as that.)
It's one of the shorter dialogues and one of the more accessible, and I would love to see fic that treats it for what it is as a stand-alone rps canon without having to drag along all that millennium of commentaries on top - you don't need that to understand most of what it's doing on a basic level. There's a bunch of English (and other) translations online, although the most common one is a mid-19th century one that's not the clearest (but most of the newer ones seem to be available as pdfs on professors' websites if you go looking.) That said, they are discussing sex from the POV of upper-class ancient Athenians where relationships with age gaps, power differentials, and young teens were more common; they don't all take the same moral position on it, but none of their positions line up with modern norms, so if you aren't interested in other cultural views on that, maybe skip this one.
I finally got around to reading Plato recently and was surprised to find that the Symposium is *fun*. It's a bunch of people who've been friends for a long time hanging out, recovering from last night's hangovers and flirting with each other continuously.
Most of the fic I've seen for Symposium is Socrates/Alcibiades and while I see where that's coming from I find that most interesting when Socrates continues to not reciprocate, so please don't pair them up romantically/sexually.
I am however super intrigued by Socrates' shameless flirting with Agathon. The stuff I've read *about* Symposium seems really eager to make that have some symbolic meaning or be about Athenian social status stuff but to me it just reads as Socrates being quite happy to play the innocent beloved to Agathon in defiance of social expectations while Pausanias watches them jealously, and if you want to write me porn I'd love a post-party scene where the three of them let that play out the way it was heading for, or a later post-porn scene where Socrates keeps playing the coquette just for fun.
I'm interested in Agathon and Pausanias's relationship generally too, though, the way they held on to their relationship for life against all the culture expectations for that kind of relationship, and the way at least within this group of friends everyone just takes it for granted, and what must have been tension between the way they had to play their relationship in public, in places like this party, and in private with just each other, (and how that ties in to the party in Agathon's honor where all the guests basically debate this stuff for fun!). Any fic about their relationship would be great.
Generally I'm also interested in anything dealing with the complicated relationships between the people at the party, the many layers of queerness going on there both in Athenian perspective and later history's and how they play off of each other, and with the philosophy they're doing about it. A setting-swap AU that messes around with that could be really cool, putting this bunch and this party into a context with very different ideas around sex and sexuality.
I'm also fascinated by Diotima, one of the only named female characters in all of the dialogues, she's basically set up as famous misanthrope Socrates's Irene Adler, *and* she's an mpreg fan. And literally nothing is known about her outside this dialogue. I'd love anything exploring who Diotima might have been, or what other kinds of stories Socrates might have told about her (true or not!) or what stories she might have had to tell about him! Also feel free to just write me classical Athenian mpreg, canon-style.
I am generally aware of the wider story of Socrates and Athenian politics and society that the Dialogues fit into but at far from an expert level and if you'd like to put some of that wider context in the story that would be good - I'm always up for some foreshadowed tragedy - but I'm also fine if you stick with the Symposium as a stand-alone canon.
Hannibal Barca and Cornelius Publius Scipio Africanus were two opposing generals in the
2nd Punic War. Hannibal was famous as the world's greatest general and started inflicting defeat after defeat on Rome, but didn't have the backing to bring the war to a decisive end; and meanwhile Scipio showed up in the provinces and started making a serious attempt at earning the world's greatest general title from him. It all came to a head when Scipio led a Roman army on Carthage and won a decisive victory and then, against both common practice and the desires of Rome, let both Hannibal and Carthage survive their defeat, only for both the generals to attempt to retire, end up in politics, completely refuse to play the political corruption game, get exiled for it,fake their own deaths and run away together.
I love a pairing that's between two extremely competent people who know they're each other's closest chance at finding an equal but have no choice but to be opponents; add in the bit where the thing they're the best at is a terrible thing they both come to despise, and the equivocally tragic endings, and I'm there for all of it. I'm not completely unaware of Roman history generally but I am happy to admit I ship this because of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dhampyresa's primers and I'm happy to get fic written pretty much entirely from them, if you don't know the history much either.
Scipio Africanus (Punic Wars RPF) Hannibal Barca (Punic Wars RPF)
I love these two for the way they are each other's match, because they are both matchless otherwise; the way they both know that and both understand the tragedy of it; the way they ran their lives in parallel, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by fate; the way they weren't afraid to show their respect for each other and take the chances they had; their simultaneous refusal to bow to the politics of corruption in two different cities across the sea; Scipio's mercy and Hannibal's grace.
If you also love those things you are probably aware of all the places history shows us their paths crossing, Cannae, Zama, Ephesus, faking their deaths and running away together, but I will never get tired of reading new versions of any of those.
I'm not particularly interested in setting-change AUs where Hannibal and Scipio aren't *the* Hannibal and *the* Scipio anymore, but stories that change the setting but keep them in their historical roles (either through bringing the history along into the AU, or because they are the same Scipio and Hannibal, transmigrated or immortal or whatever) would be great. There's also a ton of possibilities of alternate history timelines to bring them together differently - I've been particularly intrigued by something that would get them openly working together after Zama and before Hannibal's exile.
And finally: faking their deaths and running away together is of course the actual history but consider, two of the greatest generals and strategists in Earth's history mysteriously disappear from that history within a year of each other, what if they didn't run away together, what if they were bother recruited into the Time Police or the Green Lantern Corps or a secret society of Immortal Masters or something? Consider the possibilities, Hannibal and Scipio with resources and teammates beyond what they could ever have imagined, tasked to work together as some kind of special agents to defend not just their own cities but all humankind...
As you can probably tell my knowledge of this period is maybe best described as 'shallow' and 'mostly based on very specific secondary sources' but if you want to write me something intensely historical to make me want to learn more that would also be very welcome.
This is a 19th century French novel that is some times considered a famous "dirty" book, about a man who sometimes wishes he was a woman, a woman who loves women, and a woman who is also a man, who all love each other dearly while all telling themselves they are incapable of love, and also have fursuit sex sometimes. Also it has all the Gender. All of it. It's one novel and it's set in a deliberately only sketched out "romantic past of France" which is fun to explore. It's on Project Gutenberg in two volumes in the standard translation (and French). It needs all the fanfic.
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags; or it may use exceptions I explain in the form
I would really love anything for this fandom! My only DNW is a story where Theo is written as explicitly 100% cis or any of the main trio is written as explicitly 100% straight. I would love a story that does explore their relationships with gender and sexuality beyond where canon does, though. The way this story, through all the characters' POV, explores gender and sexuality in ways that are immediately familiar to a modern reader (fursuit sex!) but with characters who have an entirely different set of tools to understand them with is fascinating to me, and I want them all to figure out who they are and how they fit with themselves and with each other and get a queer as hell happy ever after out of it.
Obviously a post-canon OT3 that resolves the cliffhanger is important (or even just a fic where d'Albert and Rosette debrief with each other after Theo leaves) - maybe a fic where d'Albert learns the joy of crossdressing and genderqueerness too, where he puts on a dress and get his hair done and finally manages to see himself as pretty? How would their meetings and relationships go differently in a modern AU where they have words and communities available for many more options? Or maybe a canon-branching AU where things went just a little bit further in Rosette's original seduction of Theo? How about a modern AU where they all meet through furry fandom?
I'd love to see more of Theo's adventures before d'Albert comes into the story too, or some of the parts of Rosette's life and story we never really get a change to see, or a 3rd person bystander POV of any of it (someone else who was involved in the theatrical and is there for the drama in more ways than one?)
And speaking of bystanders there's poor old Silvio who is getting all of this dumped on him via letters but we know nothing about. What is the reaction on the Silvio homestead when the latest installment of the d'Albert story arrives in the mail? Who is he, this person d'Albert is willing to share all his innermost drama with, and what has there relationship been? (I don't *not* ship it if you're so inclined.)
Basically there's so much in this world that I want to see expanded on, I would enjoy anything about anyone. Here is your official exception if you want to write about a non-nominated character or even general worldbuilding of the vivid but sketched-in world (this book has such an amazing sense of place for a book with such a vague setting.)
This is a mostly stand-alone kids' fantasy novel from the 90s, one of my favorites of childhood, and isn't free online that I know of but should be reasonably easy to get your hands on. It's about a cursed castle and a quest to free the world's wild joy again, and also about Granny Pinchbottom and an Igor with a teddy bear. The author used to have Igor himself visit his elementary school classrooms every year to read it out loud to them, complete with teddy bear. (It was also not a surprise to me at all when I learned that the author had recently come out as bi.)
When I was looking it up pre-Yuletide I learned that the author has since worked it into his wider fantasy universe; feel free to use that or not, if you want to. There is also a direct sequel, and I tried to read it before assignments went out but didn't quite make it. So far I'm not as enchanted with it as with the first, but that may change once I finish? If anything in my prompts is contradictory with the sequel, feel free to ignore, and don't worry about spoilers.
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags; or it may use exceptions I explain in the form
This is a situation where I have one character I'd really like to read more about, so that is the character I'm requesting. However, any fanfic for this book at all would be enough to delight me, so if you matched on this but you just can't make my prompts work, please feel free to ignore them entirely and use the exception to write about somebody unrequested. I will still be happy you matched on this fandom.
This was one of my favorite books growing up and one of the things I always loved about it was how there seemed to be so much more happening that what we saw in the book (which makes sense, since it just appeared one day in Igor's hands as a complete volume.) I also really loved how it's a book about how "if you try to lock away life's wild energy, there will be a price to pay." Karl, the village boy who moved into the mystery castle to be a librarian, was always the character I wanted most to know more about. What's his story? What does it all look like from his POV? What did rediscovering life's wild energy feel like to him?
If you want to write something super queer and repressed and messed up (because what is more queer than a story about the dangers of locking away life's wild energy) about the young man who devotes himself to the strange old baron in the spooky castle, and what happens when the castle wakes up, that would be wonderful. If you're so inclined I would absolutely be up for Karl/The Baron slash, they've been living together, raising a child together!, for a decade in the cursed castle with all its passion and wild joy locked almost literally in the closet in a really accessible metaphor; any kind of romance or affair wouldn't even have been thinkable without life's wild energy, but then all of a sudden all in one night it's all unlocked and running wild all over the castle and the countryside - what was it like for them that night? What were they feeling and needing to process, this sudden release of long-held tension but also all the guilt and fear and other feelings that come with it? Even if you aren't inclined to slash them, their POV on what was happening while the book's POV was firmly away from the castle would be wonderful.
This is a very long series about the British Navy in the Napoleon Wars featuring a ship's Captain Aubrey and his learned companion Dr. Maturin. I'm re-reading to it in audiobook on my commute because the radio news is scary, but it's a very short commute so I'm going very slow. I only just got through Book 1 and I'm enjoying it, but if you have ever wanted an excuse to start this series, Book 1 is all you will need to write my prompts. It's a classic enough series that it's always still in print, if you want to try. James Dillon is the ship's lieutenant who is secretly going through some personal and political crises and doesn't outlive the first book, and he's my only request.
I have just started a re-read of this series for the first time in about twenty years and am realizing how little I actually remember. But I've gotten through the first book and I'm fascinated by Dillon - all his layers of secrets, his complicated honor, his relationships with Stephen and with Jack and how those complicate each other.
He was clearly doomed to no honorable ending other than death once he lied about the fugitives, but this is fanfic, we're not bound by that, so I'd love an AU where he doesn't die heroically. Where he's only badly wounded on the Cacafuego and Stephen has to figure out how to force him to live by the time they get back to port. Where he's only mildly wounded on the Cacafuego, and has to deal with surrender, parole, and court-martial alongside the rest of the crew. Where the Cacafuego never finds them and things go on as they were until the tension finally inevitably snaps.
I'd love backstory on him too, what happened the last time he was in Ireland that changed his relationship with his faith, or a glimpse of his backstory as a fiery young revolutionary, or of young still-idealistic Stephen through his eyes. I'd also love any of the events on the Sophie that we see through Stephen's eyes on him retold in his POV.
I'd also be into a story imagining him as queer - he has so many layers of hidden and revealed identities and brotherhoods (and the references to canon queerness in the book come so thick and fast around him) that it's hard to resist, especially alongside his complicated feelings around his honor and his Catholicism and his oaths I'd love to see some complicated feelings about sodomy too. I'd love something where that's another secret he and Stephen share - that they're both aware that the other is not entirely averse to the intimate company of other men, or at least has not always been. Stephen/James, past or present or both, love affair or convenient partner (that first intense night together on the prize is begging for another bad decision along with the drinking and the too-frank talk), but also I'd love something where they never earn that slashmark but it's still yet another secret they both share onboard the Sophie and can't figure out how to talk about it.
I'm also one of the people who genuinely loves the descriptions of seafaring and the sea in these books, so if you need to pad your wordcount feel free to give me some wind and water and white sails. I've been increasingly fascinated on this slow re-read with how much everything in these character's lives is so deeply dependent on the weather, from minute-to-minute tactical choices to long-term transportation planning, and how very much that relationship to weather isn't part of most people's daily lives these days. Something about that would be good, or even taking that idea of these people whose lives are so intimately married to the whims of the wind and putting it in a different setting to see what it does there (Sci-fi? Early airplane pilots? Modern oceanographers?)
This is another kids' novel with a sequel, about a regency Britain with magic, and a gentlemanly wizard who picks up a street rat while working undercover for Runners. I'm sorry if the prompts here feel a little sparse in comparison to the others; it's not that I want this one less, just that I have re-read it far less recently. If that comes through in the prompts I apologize; please ignore any inaccuracies and write want you want!
If you want more detailed prompts the best I can offer is this old comment by me when I was nine years closer to the last time I'd read it through..
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags; or it may use exceptions I explain in the form
I've put only Renee in because I don't have prompts at the ready for any of the other nominated characters, but I would legitimately love any fanfic at all for this fandom, so if you're burning with an idea for somebody else (nominated or not) I swear I will love it just as much.
I would love something about Mairelon and Renee's history before the Saltash Set was stolen. I have always headcanoned they had a sort of fake dating arrangement then, keeping their visible relationship at a level that was just scandalous enough to be useful to them without ever going over the line in public (maybe sometimes going over the line in private? Maybe not?) I'd also love anything at all about Renee though - her magical work and career, hwhat was her first Season as a wizard like (what about her showpiece spell for her coming out?), what was she was up to while Mairelon was on the continent and her relationships outside and inside of Mairelon's inner circle, her mentoring Kim, her thoughts on events in France, anything really about Renee.
I've always appreciated female characters who are staunchly happy to remain single even under pressure not to be, so I'd love something that explores that too, Renee's life as an independent woman in a milieu that's so focused on pairing people off. What are her reasons for that, how did she come to choose that? Does she have a secret sweetie or star-crossed love affair of some gender or another, or is she happy to be a confirmed bachelorette by choice? How does she handle all the matchmaking, especially when she was younger and still building her reputation (and how does her experience compare to Kim's?)
I am one of those people who comes to Yuletide mostly just wanting any fic for my small fandoms, so I'm really wide open about what you write for me. I will never be upset with ODAO as long as you write me the story you really wanted to write and that comes through, so if you saw one of these fandoms or characters in the tagset and immediately knew the story you wish there was a prompt for, write me that one instead.
I put a couple of fandom-specific DNWs in the signup but I don't really have any general ones, and I really did think that through. If the characters and the canon and the story you're writing cry out for something, I opt in even if it's something that's a common DNW (just tag for it if I might need to brace myself).
I like crossovers (I didn't prompt many this year, but an Aubrey/Maturin - Mairelon crossover would be amazing, so would Mairelon - Goblins in the Castle, or Scipio and Hannibal meeting characters from other fandoms/elsewhere in history, or any universe overlapping with Maupin, or anything else that strikes your fancy), I like setting-swap AUs that are interested in what the canon and the new setting have to say about each other, I like unusual prose formats and POVs and I like non-text treats or mixed media stories. (I allow treats.) I have a lot of other likes too, and perhaps I will edit this letter to add some more? If I don't get to that before you see this, this tag has my yuletide posts going back to 2003 and feel free to mine those for old likes! Some of my likes also come through in my prompts, and if you see something in a prompt for one fandom that you'd rather apply to another, go for it.
This year's "completely unintentional theme" is historical settings, so here we are in vaguely chronological order:
Symposium - Plato, Punic Wars RPF, Mademoiselle de Maupin - Théophile Gautier, Goblins in the Castle - Bruce Coville, Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede
Fandom: Symposium - Plato, Any
Plato's Symposium is one of the Socratic Dialogues, possibly one of the most analyzed, discussed, and relitigated works in all of history. It's wildly important to queer/LGBT history as well, with some of the most detailed discussion of male/male relationships in the ancient world that echoed up through the next thousand+ years of European thought. But it's also basically an RPS story about a bunch of famous people Plato knew when he was younger hanging out, getting drunk, and talking about gay shipping, having a good time before all the tragedy that befell them later. If you've heard people talk about the ancient arguments over whether Achilles topped - that's in here. (There's a theory that this was published as an advertisement for Plato's later Academy, by showing it as a place where you get to hang out with your frat bros, meet famous people, have fun and talk philosophy, and it definitely makes sense as that.)
It's one of the shorter dialogues and one of the more accessible, and I would love to see fic that treats it for what it is as a stand-alone rps canon without having to drag along all that millennium of commentaries on top - you don't need that to understand most of what it's doing on a basic level. There's a bunch of English (and other) translations online, although the most common one is a mid-19th century one that's not the clearest (but most of the newer ones seem to be available as pdfs on professors' websites if you go looking.) That said, they are discussing sex from the POV of upper-class ancient Athenians where relationships with age gaps, power differentials, and young teens were more common; they don't all take the same moral position on it, but none of their positions line up with modern norms, so if you aren't interested in other cultural views on that, maybe skip this one.
I finally got around to reading Plato recently and was surprised to find that the Symposium is *fun*. It's a bunch of people who've been friends for a long time hanging out, recovering from last night's hangovers and flirting with each other continuously.
Most of the fic I've seen for Symposium is Socrates/Alcibiades and while I see where that's coming from I find that most interesting when Socrates continues to not reciprocate, so please don't pair them up romantically/sexually.
I am however super intrigued by Socrates' shameless flirting with Agathon. The stuff I've read *about* Symposium seems really eager to make that have some symbolic meaning or be about Athenian social status stuff but to me it just reads as Socrates being quite happy to play the innocent beloved to Agathon in defiance of social expectations while Pausanias watches them jealously, and if you want to write me porn I'd love a post-party scene where the three of them let that play out the way it was heading for, or a later post-porn scene where Socrates keeps playing the coquette just for fun.
I'm interested in Agathon and Pausanias's relationship generally too, though, the way they held on to their relationship for life against all the culture expectations for that kind of relationship, and the way at least within this group of friends everyone just takes it for granted, and what must have been tension between the way they had to play their relationship in public, in places like this party, and in private with just each other, (and how that ties in to the party in Agathon's honor where all the guests basically debate this stuff for fun!). Any fic about their relationship would be great.
Generally I'm also interested in anything dealing with the complicated relationships between the people at the party, the many layers of queerness going on there both in Athenian perspective and later history's and how they play off of each other, and with the philosophy they're doing about it. A setting-swap AU that messes around with that could be really cool, putting this bunch and this party into a context with very different ideas around sex and sexuality.
I'm also fascinated by Diotima, one of the only named female characters in all of the dialogues, she's basically set up as famous misanthrope Socrates's Irene Adler, *and* she's an mpreg fan. And literally nothing is known about her outside this dialogue. I'd love anything exploring who Diotima might have been, or what other kinds of stories Socrates might have told about her (true or not!) or what stories she might have had to tell about him! Also feel free to just write me classical Athenian mpreg, canon-style.
I am generally aware of the wider story of Socrates and Athenian politics and society that the Dialogues fit into but at far from an expert level and if you'd like to put some of that wider context in the story that would be good - I'm always up for some foreshadowed tragedy - but I'm also fine if you stick with the Symposium as a stand-alone canon.
Punic Wars RPF, Any
Hannibal Barca and Cornelius Publius Scipio Africanus were two opposing generals in the
2nd Punic War. Hannibal was famous as the world's greatest general and started inflicting defeat after defeat on Rome, but didn't have the backing to bring the war to a decisive end; and meanwhile Scipio showed up in the provinces and started making a serious attempt at earning the world's greatest general title from him. It all came to a head when Scipio led a Roman army on Carthage and won a decisive victory and then, against both common practice and the desires of Rome, let both Hannibal and Carthage survive their defeat, only for both the generals to attempt to retire, end up in politics, completely refuse to play the political corruption game, get exiled for it,
I love a pairing that's between two extremely competent people who know they're each other's closest chance at finding an equal but have no choice but to be opponents; add in the bit where the thing they're the best at is a terrible thing they both come to despise, and the equivocally tragic endings, and I'm there for all of it. I'm not completely unaware of Roman history generally but I am happy to admit I ship this because of
dhampyresa's primers and I'm happy to get fic written pretty much entirely from them, if you don't know the history much either.Scipio Africanus (Punic Wars RPF) Hannibal Barca (Punic Wars RPF)
I love these two for the way they are each other's match, because they are both matchless otherwise; the way they both know that and both understand the tragedy of it; the way they ran their lives in parallel, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by fate; the way they weren't afraid to show their respect for each other and take the chances they had; their simultaneous refusal to bow to the politics of corruption in two different cities across the sea; Scipio's mercy and Hannibal's grace.
If you also love those things you are probably aware of all the places history shows us their paths crossing, Cannae, Zama, Ephesus, faking their deaths and running away together, but I will never get tired of reading new versions of any of those.
I'm not particularly interested in setting-change AUs where Hannibal and Scipio aren't *the* Hannibal and *the* Scipio anymore, but stories that change the setting but keep them in their historical roles (either through bringing the history along into the AU, or because they are the same Scipio and Hannibal, transmigrated or immortal or whatever) would be great. There's also a ton of possibilities of alternate history timelines to bring them together differently - I've been particularly intrigued by something that would get them openly working together after Zama and before Hannibal's exile.
And finally: faking their deaths and running away together is of course the actual history but consider, two of the greatest generals and strategists in Earth's history mysteriously disappear from that history within a year of each other, what if they didn't run away together, what if they were bother recruited into the Time Police or the Green Lantern Corps or a secret society of Immortal Masters or something? Consider the possibilities, Hannibal and Scipio with resources and teammates beyond what they could ever have imagined, tasked to work together as some kind of special agents to defend not just their own cities but all humankind...
As you can probably tell my knowledge of this period is maybe best described as 'shallow' and 'mostly based on very specific secondary sources' but if you want to write me something intensely historical to make me want to learn more that would also be very welcome.
Mademoiselle de Maupin - Théophile Gautier, Any
This is a 19th century French novel that is some times considered a famous "dirty" book, about a man who sometimes wishes he was a woman, a woman who loves women, and a woman who is also a man, who all love each other dearly while all telling themselves they are incapable of love, and also have fursuit sex sometimes. Also it has all the Gender. All of it. It's one novel and it's set in a deliberately only sketched out "romantic past of France" which is fun to explore. It's on Project Gutenberg in two volumes in the standard translation (and French). It needs all the fanfic.
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags; or it may use exceptions I explain in the form
I would really love anything for this fandom! My only DNW is a story where Theo is written as explicitly 100% cis or any of the main trio is written as explicitly 100% straight. I would love a story that does explore their relationships with gender and sexuality beyond where canon does, though. The way this story, through all the characters' POV, explores gender and sexuality in ways that are immediately familiar to a modern reader (fursuit sex!) but with characters who have an entirely different set of tools to understand them with is fascinating to me, and I want them all to figure out who they are and how they fit with themselves and with each other and get a queer as hell happy ever after out of it.
Obviously a post-canon OT3 that resolves the cliffhanger is important (or even just a fic where d'Albert and Rosette debrief with each other after Theo leaves) - maybe a fic where d'Albert learns the joy of crossdressing and genderqueerness too, where he puts on a dress and get his hair done and finally manages to see himself as pretty? How would their meetings and relationships go differently in a modern AU where they have words and communities available for many more options? Or maybe a canon-branching AU where things went just a little bit further in Rosette's original seduction of Theo? How about a modern AU where they all meet through furry fandom?
I'd love to see more of Theo's adventures before d'Albert comes into the story too, or some of the parts of Rosette's life and story we never really get a change to see, or a 3rd person bystander POV of any of it (someone else who was involved in the theatrical and is there for the drama in more ways than one?)
And speaking of bystanders there's poor old Silvio who is getting all of this dumped on him via letters but we know nothing about. What is the reaction on the Silvio homestead when the latest installment of the d'Albert story arrives in the mail? Who is he, this person d'Albert is willing to share all his innermost drama with, and what has there relationship been? (I don't *not* ship it if you're so inclined.)
Basically there's so much in this world that I want to see expanded on, I would enjoy anything about anyone. Here is your official exception if you want to write about a non-nominated character or even general worldbuilding of the vivid but sketched-in world (this book has such an amazing sense of place for a book with such a vague setting.)
Goblins in the Castle - Bruce Coville, Karl
This is a mostly stand-alone kids' fantasy novel from the 90s, one of my favorites of childhood, and isn't free online that I know of but should be reasonably easy to get your hands on. It's about a cursed castle and a quest to free the world's wild joy again, and also about Granny Pinchbottom and an Igor with a teddy bear. The author used to have Igor himself visit his elementary school classrooms every year to read it out loud to them, complete with teddy bear. (It was also not a surprise to me at all when I learned that the author had recently come out as bi.)
When I was looking it up pre-Yuletide I learned that the author has since worked it into his wider fantasy universe; feel free to use that or not, if you want to. There is also a direct sequel, and I tried to read it before assignments went out but didn't quite make it. So far I'm not as enchanted with it as with the first, but that may change once I finish? If anything in my prompts is contradictory with the sequel, feel free to ignore, and don't worry about spoilers.
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags; or it may use exceptions I explain in the form
This is a situation where I have one character I'd really like to read more about, so that is the character I'm requesting. However, any fanfic for this book at all would be enough to delight me, so if you matched on this but you just can't make my prompts work, please feel free to ignore them entirely and use the exception to write about somebody unrequested. I will still be happy you matched on this fandom.
This was one of my favorite books growing up and one of the things I always loved about it was how there seemed to be so much more happening that what we saw in the book (which makes sense, since it just appeared one day in Igor's hands as a complete volume.) I also really loved how it's a book about how "if you try to lock away life's wild energy, there will be a price to pay." Karl, the village boy who moved into the mystery castle to be a librarian, was always the character I wanted most to know more about. What's his story? What does it all look like from his POV? What did rediscovering life's wild energy feel like to him?
If you want to write something super queer and repressed and messed up (because what is more queer than a story about the dangers of locking away life's wild energy) about the young man who devotes himself to the strange old baron in the spooky castle, and what happens when the castle wakes up, that would be wonderful. If you're so inclined I would absolutely be up for Karl/The Baron slash, they've been living together, raising a child together!, for a decade in the cursed castle with all its passion and wild joy locked almost literally in the closet in a really accessible metaphor; any kind of romance or affair wouldn't even have been thinkable without life's wild energy, but then all of a sudden all in one night it's all unlocked and running wild all over the castle and the countryside - what was it like for them that night? What were they feeling and needing to process, this sudden release of long-held tension but also all the guilt and fear and other feelings that come with it? Even if you aren't inclined to slash them, their POV on what was happening while the book's POV was firmly away from the castle would be wonderful.
Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, James Dillon
This is a very long series about the British Navy in the Napoleon Wars featuring a ship's Captain Aubrey and his learned companion Dr. Maturin. I'm re-reading to it in audiobook on my commute because the radio news is scary, but it's a very short commute so I'm going very slow. I only just got through Book 1 and I'm enjoying it, but if you have ever wanted an excuse to start this series, Book 1 is all you will need to write my prompts. It's a classic enough series that it's always still in print, if you want to try. James Dillon is the ship's lieutenant who is secretly going through some personal and political crises and doesn't outlive the first book, and he's my only request.
I have just started a re-read of this series for the first time in about twenty years and am realizing how little I actually remember. But I've gotten through the first book and I'm fascinated by Dillon - all his layers of secrets, his complicated honor, his relationships with Stephen and with Jack and how those complicate each other.
He was clearly doomed to no honorable ending other than death once he lied about the fugitives, but this is fanfic, we're not bound by that, so I'd love an AU where he doesn't die heroically. Where he's only badly wounded on the Cacafuego and Stephen has to figure out how to force him to live by the time they get back to port. Where he's only mildly wounded on the Cacafuego, and has to deal with surrender, parole, and court-martial alongside the rest of the crew. Where the Cacafuego never finds them and things go on as they were until the tension finally inevitably snaps.
I'd love backstory on him too, what happened the last time he was in Ireland that changed his relationship with his faith, or a glimpse of his backstory as a fiery young revolutionary, or of young still-idealistic Stephen through his eyes. I'd also love any of the events on the Sophie that we see through Stephen's eyes on him retold in his POV.
I'd also be into a story imagining him as queer - he has so many layers of hidden and revealed identities and brotherhoods (and the references to canon queerness in the book come so thick and fast around him) that it's hard to resist, especially alongside his complicated feelings around his honor and his Catholicism and his oaths I'd love to see some complicated feelings about sodomy too. I'd love something where that's another secret he and Stephen share - that they're both aware that the other is not entirely averse to the intimate company of other men, or at least has not always been. Stephen/James, past or present or both, love affair or convenient partner (that first intense night together on the prize is begging for another bad decision along with the drinking and the too-frank talk), but also I'd love something where they never earn that slashmark but it's still yet another secret they both share onboard the Sophie and can't figure out how to talk about it.
I'm also one of the people who genuinely loves the descriptions of seafaring and the sea in these books, so if you need to pad your wordcount feel free to give me some wind and water and white sails. I've been increasingly fascinated on this slow re-read with how much everything in these character's lives is so deeply dependent on the weather, from minute-to-minute tactical choices to long-term transportation planning, and how very much that relationship to weather isn't part of most people's daily lives these days. Something about that would be good, or even taking that idea of these people whose lives are so intimately married to the whims of the wind and putting it in a different setting to see what it does there (Sci-fi? Early airplane pilots? Modern oceanographers?)
Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede, Renee D'Auber
This is another kids' novel with a sequel, about a regency Britain with magic, and a gentlemanly wizard who picks up a street rat while working undercover for Runners. I'm sorry if the prompts here feel a little sparse in comparison to the others; it's not that I want this one less, just that I have re-read it far less recently. If that comes through in the prompts I apologize; please ignore any inaccuracies and write want you want!
If you want more detailed prompts the best I can offer is this old comment by me when I was nine years closer to the last time I'd read it through..
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags; or it may use exceptions I explain in the form
I've put only Renee in because I don't have prompts at the ready for any of the other nominated characters, but I would legitimately love any fanfic at all for this fandom, so if you're burning with an idea for somebody else (nominated or not) I swear I will love it just as much.
I would love something about Mairelon and Renee's history before the Saltash Set was stolen. I have always headcanoned they had a sort of fake dating arrangement then, keeping their visible relationship at a level that was just scandalous enough to be useful to them without ever going over the line in public (maybe sometimes going over the line in private? Maybe not?) I'd also love anything at all about Renee though - her magical work and career, hwhat was her first Season as a wizard like (what about her showpiece spell for her coming out?), what was she was up to while Mairelon was on the continent and her relationships outside and inside of Mairelon's inner circle, her mentoring Kim, her thoughts on events in France, anything really about Renee.
I've always appreciated female characters who are staunchly happy to remain single even under pressure not to be, so I'd love something that explores that too, Renee's life as an independent woman in a milieu that's so focused on pairing people off. What are her reasons for that, how did she come to choose that? Does she have a secret sweetie or star-crossed love affair of some gender or another, or is she happy to be a confirmed bachelorette by choice? How does she handle all the matchmaking, especially when she was younger and still building her reputation (and how does her experience compare to Kim's?)