Dear Yuletide Writer
Oct. 14th, 2013 02:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedantherDear Yuletide Writer,
Welcome! Apparently we have an obscure fandom in common! (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it's not Moonbeam. But if it is, that's awesome.) And you've very kindly offered to write a story for me, which is lovely. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
General notes
This year, a lot of my preferences regarding sex, death, alternate universes, etc. can be collectively summed up thus: Keep it canon-appropriate, please. No dark, angsty sex in the light fluffy Disney movie. (Not that I mind a well-written sex scene in an appropriate context, but it isn't what I'm looking for on this occasion or from these fandoms. And while I love a good AU, you'll see from the optional details that part of what draws me to these fandoms is fascination with the details of the universes they're set in.)
As a reader, my doorways into a story are plot and character, rather than setting or language. I like worldbuilding and beautiful writing as well, but I see them as bonuses in a story with a good plot and characters rather than things that can carry a story on their own.
If you want to know about fics I've liked in the past, my bookmarks on AO3 might be one place to start.
My dealbreaker put-off is social embarrassment and humiliation, especially the version where a person confidently grasps the wrong end of the stick and proceeds to act in a wildly inappropriate manner without realising that's what they're doing. (When I was a kid, it wasn't the alien monsters that I watched from behind the sofa, it was the reruns of I Love Lucy.) There are other things I find off-putting, but you'll keep clear of them if you follow the guideline above about keeping it canon-appropriate.
For Yuletide generally, and again for these fandoms in particular, I would prefer a story that ends happily, or at least hopefully. (I don't need a reminder that life can be hard; I appreciate a reassurance that hardship can be overcome.)
You and I both know that just because this is a December Holidays exchange doesn't mean that there needs to be a December Holidays element in the story you write - but if you come up with a cool idea on that theme, for any of these fandoms, go ahead.
Fandom 1: Wreck-It Ralph
Requested characters: Vanellope von Schweetz, Taffyta Muttonfudge
Availability: Wreck-It Ralph is a single movie, less than two hours long. It's only about a year old, and the DVD is probably available through your favourite source of fine home video products.
Optional details are optional:
If you'd like a specific idea: It seems to me there's more to be told about Taffyta and her cronies. They're obviously never going to try bullying Vanellope again, but after those non-apology apologies they gave I wouldn't be surprised if they started picking on somebody else. I want to believe that they learned the error of their ways, and I want to believe that they and Vanellope settled their differences and became friends, the way Ralph and the Nicelanders did, but I think that as of the end of the film they still have some way to go before they reach that point. I'd be very happy to see a story about how they get the rest of the way.
Otherwise, I'd be happy with anything that captures the feel of the movie - a bit of humor, a bit of heartwarming, maybe a few arcade game in-jokes if that's your speed - especially if it further explores the worlds inhabited by the game characters and how they relate to the games as the players see them.
Wreck-It Ralph is one of my favourite animated movies ever. I laughed, I cried, my heart was warmed. I love that nearly everybody gets to have a happy ending, even the unkind and thoughtless people, who get to become less unkind and more thoughtful. (In some movies, being mean to the protagonist would doom you to being mercilessly humiliated while everyone laughs smugly; I love that this is not one of those movies.)
But when it comes to Taffyta and the other racers who picked on Vanellope, I'm not convinced they've earned their happy ending yet. Their expressions of remorse at the end leave quite a bit to be desired, ranging from outright blame-shifting to an apology from Taffyta that gives me the impression she's only sorry because Vanellope turned out to be someone important. I don't get the impression that they really understand the wrongness of what they did, and I keep thinking that one day Vanellope's going to turn around and find them behaving just as badly to somebody else.
(I've seen fanworks exploring the idea that the racers were given meaner personalities along with their Vanellope-specific amnesia, and got their original friendly personalities back when the game reset - but I have to say that this idea doesn't do it for me. For one thing, it doesn't actually help with the non-apology apologies, because those happened after the reset. More importantly, it has no dramatic heft; organic character development can be explored, but if they were only bad because they were programmed that way there's nowhere for the story to go. I'd happily read a story about how Taffyta acts the way she does because she took King Candy as her model of success and learned bad lessons thereby, but I'm not interested in a story about how she acts the way she does because somebody did the equivalent of waving an evil magic wand.)
So, one thing that would make me really happy is a story about how the racers learned their lessons, became better people, and got a happy ending they deserved. I want to believe it happened; you just have to tell me how.
Alternatively, another thing that would make me happy is a story further exploring the nature of the worlds behind the screens. How are they shaped by having to put on appearances for the players? (Are there any more things like the "first person shooter"?) Or what else goes on that the players never get to see?
If there's one thing this movie teaches us, it's that there's more to a person than their role in a game. What other characters have personality features, or unexpected hobbies, that their designers didn't give them? Did they start out with them, or develop them as they got older? Does it make a difference whether the designers gave them a detailed backstory like Calhoun, a sketchy backstory like Ralph, or no backstory at all, like Q*bert?
If you get a really neat idea that doesn't have a major role for Vanellope or Taffyta, feel free to go ahead and leave them out. I'd like a story about them, but there are plenty of other characters in the movie I'd like a story about just as much.
Fandom 2: Father Brown
Requested character: M. Hercule Flambeau
Availability: There are five collections of Father Brown stories, but I'm a late arrival to the fandom, so if all you want is to catch up to where I'm at, you only need the first two, The Innocence of Father Brown and The Wisdom of Father Brown. Conveniently, those two are out of copyright in the US, and consequently widely available in a variety of cheap editions (and here and here on Project Gutenberg). (If you're in a country with less expansive copyright than the US, you may have even more options; in Australia, for instance, the entire series is available from Project Gutenberg Australia, among other places.)
Optional details are optional:
Father Brown's friend Flambeau apparently makes a respectable living as a private detective, but since he's not the series protagonist the only time we get to hear about one of his cases is when it turns weird and he hands it over to Father Brown. I would like to see that remedied, with a story about Flambeau investigating and solving a case of his own. (Not one of the weird ones that Father Brown usually solves; it's firmly established Flambeau isn't well suited to those. A different sort of case, one that suits Flambeau's temperament and skills.) I have no objection to Father Brown showing up, just as long as he doesn't take over.
If that doesn't appeal to you, perhaps a story about one of Flambeau's exploits in the days before he first met Father Brown?
It's not that I don't like the Father Brown stories, but it does get a bit monotonous having a respected private detective repeatedly appear and never do any significant detecting. I realise that in some ways that's the point, that in many another mystery story the private detective would be the hero and the little priest just a supporting character, but I feel it all the same. All those times we've been told how clever Flambeau is, but he never gets a chance to prove it.
I'm not sure what I can say about what I particularly like about the Father Brown stories, since the things that come to mind - such as Chesterton's prose style - are part of what make Father Brown stories good, but might not be so good for a Flambeau story. I leave that to your judgement.
Fandom 3: Puck of Pook's Hill
Requested characters: Una, Dan, Puck
Availability: Two books, Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies. Again, these are out of copyright, and available on Project Gutenberg here and here.
Optional details are optional:
I'd be interested in a story exploring the mechanics of how Puck's storytelling sessions work: Are the storytellers ghosts or memories that Puck is somehow summoning up? Or is there some kind of time travel going on, so that the living people come forward to tell their story, and then return to their own time? Will Dan and Una ever get called on to tell their own stories? (And if so, to whom?)
Or, perhaps Puck could call up somebody to tell Dan and Una about their life in *your* part of the world (assuming you don't actually live in the part of England the series is already mostly set in). What interesting historical event might somebody from there have been around to witness? I'll be extra-thrilled if you tell the story in the proper style - and unspeakably impressed if you also do a poem at the end.
One other thought: Some of my favourite stories in this series are ones where Kipling did something interesting with the narrative frame, like having several different narrators tells stories that unknown to them connected to each other (obviously not an option in a one-off story), or like "Marklake Witches", where a story suitable for telling to children has another less straightforward story lurking between and behind it.
Fandom 4: Moonbeam
Requested characters: Moonbeam, Scott, Dr Jim
Availability: The good news is that although there are ten books in the series, they're quite short, and you could probably get through them all in no more time than watching a movie - if you had them all. The bad news is that they're long out of print, and getting a complete set together would require a tedious and possibly expensive safari through the online second-hand book sources. I would like to make it absolutely clear that I wouldn't expect anyone to go to that trouble, and I will be just as happy with a story from one of the easier-to-get-hold-of fandoms.
Optional details are optional:
Obscure as this series is, just about anything in this fandom would make me happy. Further adventures of Moonbeam and her friends after the point where the series left off is one obvious place to go. Or something that compares or blends the series' version of the space race with real history. (Did Moonbeam ever spill jam on Neil Armstrong? Dr Jim is an African American man holding a professional post on a US rocket base in the 1960s - surely he has stories to tell.) I would be gleeful if you did something interesting with the progressive prose style.
What's an obscure fandoms fest without a really obscure fandom? I don't expect anybody to have heard of the Moonbeam series, let alone be prepared to write for it, but if I get a story in this fandom I'll be, well, over the moon.
Assuming you don't know, this is a series of ten children's books from the 1960s. Moonbeam is a chimp (not a talking chimp, just a chimp) who lives on a rocket base and participates in the space race. Being the protagonist of the series, she plays a much larger part than any real-life primate, going up in multiple space-shots (including at least one round trip to the moon). The stories are divided between her missions and the mischief she gets up to in between.
Apart from the fact that the stories are just plain fun, one of the things that fascinates me about the series is the way the stories develop from book to book. It was designed as a set of progressive readers, so the prose develops from the "See Moonbeam. See Moonbeam run." level up to proper sentences with adverbs and everything, and the complexity of the storylines develops too. Early books have straightforward plots with obvious danger and a lot of broad humour, told in simple prose with a very small vocabulary that relies heavily on the illustrations, but by the last book in the series the prose stands on its own and tells a story where the interest is as much in the interpersonal relationships as the external threats. (I may be overselling the last book a bit; it's been years since I read it. But the difference from the first book is remarkable.) Not that the earlier books lack ambition: one of my favourites tells the tale of Moonbeam visiting a zoo, befriending a giraffe, accidentally letting it loose, and later finding it again and bringing it home, navigating from a position atop the giraffe's long neck - all in a limited vocabulary that doesn't include the word "giraffe".
If you do write me a story in this fandom, o Yuletide writer, I would love it if you somehow worked the prose style in. I realise it would be hard to write to the minimum word count in the style most of the books are in, but maybe a set of scenes spread out across the series, with each written in the appropriate style? Or a story with two parallel narrations describing the same events, one in the simple style and one in more normal prose and more detail? Or a story that projects past the end of the series to a point where the prose style has developed into something reasonable, telling of what happened to Moonbeam and her friends at that later time? Or a Moonbeam story that's a crossover with (or just told in the style of) some other series with an idiosyncratic prose style?
(Or, you know, if the idea of writing in a particular style feels like a burden, just write in whatever style works for you and the story you want to tell. Optional details are optional.)
Another thing about the series that interests me is the ahistorical nature of the space program it depicts, even apart from Moonbeam's own long and varied career within it. All the astronauts are different, and they go to the moon more often and in different-shaped machines than in real history. There's also the fact that one of the main recurring human characters, who works on the rocket base, is African American and nobody ever finds this fact worthy of comment.
(Considering how optimistic the series is about some things, if you do go the route of exploring historical parallels, you may find that things get less cheerful than the series norm. I don't object to that as such, if it serves the story, but I would prefer that the overall mood of the story ended up fairly positive, thanks.)
Finally: Thank you again for being a part of Yuletide. I hope this extremely long letter has been some use to you, but if you have an idea you'd love to write in one of these fandoms that isn't any of the ideas I've suggested, that's fine too. I'd rather receive a story you were enthusiastic about and loved working on than one you had to force yourself into an uncomfortable shape to write, even if it isn't precisely what I asked for. Who knows, it might turn out to be a story I never knew I needed.
Welcome! Apparently we have an obscure fandom in common! (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it's not Moonbeam. But if it is, that's awesome.) And you've very kindly offered to write a story for me, which is lovely. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
General notes
This year, a lot of my preferences regarding sex, death, alternate universes, etc. can be collectively summed up thus: Keep it canon-appropriate, please. No dark, angsty sex in the light fluffy Disney movie. (Not that I mind a well-written sex scene in an appropriate context, but it isn't what I'm looking for on this occasion or from these fandoms. And while I love a good AU, you'll see from the optional details that part of what draws me to these fandoms is fascination with the details of the universes they're set in.)
As a reader, my doorways into a story are plot and character, rather than setting or language. I like worldbuilding and beautiful writing as well, but I see them as bonuses in a story with a good plot and characters rather than things that can carry a story on their own.
If you want to know about fics I've liked in the past, my bookmarks on AO3 might be one place to start.
My dealbreaker put-off is social embarrassment and humiliation, especially the version where a person confidently grasps the wrong end of the stick and proceeds to act in a wildly inappropriate manner without realising that's what they're doing. (When I was a kid, it wasn't the alien monsters that I watched from behind the sofa, it was the reruns of I Love Lucy.) There are other things I find off-putting, but you'll keep clear of them if you follow the guideline above about keeping it canon-appropriate.
For Yuletide generally, and again for these fandoms in particular, I would prefer a story that ends happily, or at least hopefully. (I don't need a reminder that life can be hard; I appreciate a reassurance that hardship can be overcome.)
You and I both know that just because this is a December Holidays exchange doesn't mean that there needs to be a December Holidays element in the story you write - but if you come up with a cool idea on that theme, for any of these fandoms, go ahead.
Fandom 1: Wreck-It Ralph
Requested characters: Vanellope von Schweetz, Taffyta Muttonfudge
Availability: Wreck-It Ralph is a single movie, less than two hours long. It's only about a year old, and the DVD is probably available through your favourite source of fine home video products.
Optional details are optional:
If you'd like a specific idea: It seems to me there's more to be told about Taffyta and her cronies. They're obviously never going to try bullying Vanellope again, but after those non-apology apologies they gave I wouldn't be surprised if they started picking on somebody else. I want to believe that they learned the error of their ways, and I want to believe that they and Vanellope settled their differences and became friends, the way Ralph and the Nicelanders did, but I think that as of the end of the film they still have some way to go before they reach that point. I'd be very happy to see a story about how they get the rest of the way.
Otherwise, I'd be happy with anything that captures the feel of the movie - a bit of humor, a bit of heartwarming, maybe a few arcade game in-jokes if that's your speed - especially if it further explores the worlds inhabited by the game characters and how they relate to the games as the players see them.
Wreck-It Ralph is one of my favourite animated movies ever. I laughed, I cried, my heart was warmed. I love that nearly everybody gets to have a happy ending, even the unkind and thoughtless people, who get to become less unkind and more thoughtful. (In some movies, being mean to the protagonist would doom you to being mercilessly humiliated while everyone laughs smugly; I love that this is not one of those movies.)
But when it comes to Taffyta and the other racers who picked on Vanellope, I'm not convinced they've earned their happy ending yet. Their expressions of remorse at the end leave quite a bit to be desired, ranging from outright blame-shifting to an apology from Taffyta that gives me the impression she's only sorry because Vanellope turned out to be someone important. I don't get the impression that they really understand the wrongness of what they did, and I keep thinking that one day Vanellope's going to turn around and find them behaving just as badly to somebody else.
(I've seen fanworks exploring the idea that the racers were given meaner personalities along with their Vanellope-specific amnesia, and got their original friendly personalities back when the game reset - but I have to say that this idea doesn't do it for me. For one thing, it doesn't actually help with the non-apology apologies, because those happened after the reset. More importantly, it has no dramatic heft; organic character development can be explored, but if they were only bad because they were programmed that way there's nowhere for the story to go. I'd happily read a story about how Taffyta acts the way she does because she took King Candy as her model of success and learned bad lessons thereby, but I'm not interested in a story about how she acts the way she does because somebody did the equivalent of waving an evil magic wand.)
So, one thing that would make me really happy is a story about how the racers learned their lessons, became better people, and got a happy ending they deserved. I want to believe it happened; you just have to tell me how.
Alternatively, another thing that would make me happy is a story further exploring the nature of the worlds behind the screens. How are they shaped by having to put on appearances for the players? (Are there any more things like the "first person shooter"?) Or what else goes on that the players never get to see?
If there's one thing this movie teaches us, it's that there's more to a person than their role in a game. What other characters have personality features, or unexpected hobbies, that their designers didn't give them? Did they start out with them, or develop them as they got older? Does it make a difference whether the designers gave them a detailed backstory like Calhoun, a sketchy backstory like Ralph, or no backstory at all, like Q*bert?
If you get a really neat idea that doesn't have a major role for Vanellope or Taffyta, feel free to go ahead and leave them out. I'd like a story about them, but there are plenty of other characters in the movie I'd like a story about just as much.
Fandom 2: Father Brown
Requested character: M. Hercule Flambeau
Availability: There are five collections of Father Brown stories, but I'm a late arrival to the fandom, so if all you want is to catch up to where I'm at, you only need the first two, The Innocence of Father Brown and The Wisdom of Father Brown. Conveniently, those two are out of copyright in the US, and consequently widely available in a variety of cheap editions (and here and here on Project Gutenberg). (If you're in a country with less expansive copyright than the US, you may have even more options; in Australia, for instance, the entire series is available from Project Gutenberg Australia, among other places.)
Optional details are optional:
Father Brown's friend Flambeau apparently makes a respectable living as a private detective, but since he's not the series protagonist the only time we get to hear about one of his cases is when it turns weird and he hands it over to Father Brown. I would like to see that remedied, with a story about Flambeau investigating and solving a case of his own. (Not one of the weird ones that Father Brown usually solves; it's firmly established Flambeau isn't well suited to those. A different sort of case, one that suits Flambeau's temperament and skills.) I have no objection to Father Brown showing up, just as long as he doesn't take over.
If that doesn't appeal to you, perhaps a story about one of Flambeau's exploits in the days before he first met Father Brown?
It's not that I don't like the Father Brown stories, but it does get a bit monotonous having a respected private detective repeatedly appear and never do any significant detecting. I realise that in some ways that's the point, that in many another mystery story the private detective would be the hero and the little priest just a supporting character, but I feel it all the same. All those times we've been told how clever Flambeau is, but he never gets a chance to prove it.
I'm not sure what I can say about what I particularly like about the Father Brown stories, since the things that come to mind - such as Chesterton's prose style - are part of what make Father Brown stories good, but might not be so good for a Flambeau story. I leave that to your judgement.
Fandom 3: Puck of Pook's Hill
Requested characters: Una, Dan, Puck
Availability: Two books, Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies. Again, these are out of copyright, and available on Project Gutenberg here and here.
Optional details are optional:
I'd be interested in a story exploring the mechanics of how Puck's storytelling sessions work: Are the storytellers ghosts or memories that Puck is somehow summoning up? Or is there some kind of time travel going on, so that the living people come forward to tell their story, and then return to their own time? Will Dan and Una ever get called on to tell their own stories? (And if so, to whom?)
Or, perhaps Puck could call up somebody to tell Dan and Una about their life in *your* part of the world (assuming you don't actually live in the part of England the series is already mostly set in). What interesting historical event might somebody from there have been around to witness? I'll be extra-thrilled if you tell the story in the proper style - and unspeakably impressed if you also do a poem at the end.
One other thought: Some of my favourite stories in this series are ones where Kipling did something interesting with the narrative frame, like having several different narrators tells stories that unknown to them connected to each other (obviously not an option in a one-off story), or like "Marklake Witches", where a story suitable for telling to children has another less straightforward story lurking between and behind it.
Fandom 4: Moonbeam
Requested characters: Moonbeam, Scott, Dr Jim
Availability: The good news is that although there are ten books in the series, they're quite short, and you could probably get through them all in no more time than watching a movie - if you had them all. The bad news is that they're long out of print, and getting a complete set together would require a tedious and possibly expensive safari through the online second-hand book sources. I would like to make it absolutely clear that I wouldn't expect anyone to go to that trouble, and I will be just as happy with a story from one of the easier-to-get-hold-of fandoms.
Optional details are optional:
Obscure as this series is, just about anything in this fandom would make me happy. Further adventures of Moonbeam and her friends after the point where the series left off is one obvious place to go. Or something that compares or blends the series' version of the space race with real history. (Did Moonbeam ever spill jam on Neil Armstrong? Dr Jim is an African American man holding a professional post on a US rocket base in the 1960s - surely he has stories to tell.) I would be gleeful if you did something interesting with the progressive prose style.
What's an obscure fandoms fest without a really obscure fandom? I don't expect anybody to have heard of the Moonbeam series, let alone be prepared to write for it, but if I get a story in this fandom I'll be, well, over the moon.
Assuming you don't know, this is a series of ten children's books from the 1960s. Moonbeam is a chimp (not a talking chimp, just a chimp) who lives on a rocket base and participates in the space race. Being the protagonist of the series, she plays a much larger part than any real-life primate, going up in multiple space-shots (including at least one round trip to the moon). The stories are divided between her missions and the mischief she gets up to in between.
Apart from the fact that the stories are just plain fun, one of the things that fascinates me about the series is the way the stories develop from book to book. It was designed as a set of progressive readers, so the prose develops from the "See Moonbeam. See Moonbeam run." level up to proper sentences with adverbs and everything, and the complexity of the storylines develops too. Early books have straightforward plots with obvious danger and a lot of broad humour, told in simple prose with a very small vocabulary that relies heavily on the illustrations, but by the last book in the series the prose stands on its own and tells a story where the interest is as much in the interpersonal relationships as the external threats. (I may be overselling the last book a bit; it's been years since I read it. But the difference from the first book is remarkable.) Not that the earlier books lack ambition: one of my favourites tells the tale of Moonbeam visiting a zoo, befriending a giraffe, accidentally letting it loose, and later finding it again and bringing it home, navigating from a position atop the giraffe's long neck - all in a limited vocabulary that doesn't include the word "giraffe".
If you do write me a story in this fandom, o Yuletide writer, I would love it if you somehow worked the prose style in. I realise it would be hard to write to the minimum word count in the style most of the books are in, but maybe a set of scenes spread out across the series, with each written in the appropriate style? Or a story with two parallel narrations describing the same events, one in the simple style and one in more normal prose and more detail? Or a story that projects past the end of the series to a point where the prose style has developed into something reasonable, telling of what happened to Moonbeam and her friends at that later time? Or a Moonbeam story that's a crossover with (or just told in the style of) some other series with an idiosyncratic prose style?
(Or, you know, if the idea of writing in a particular style feels like a burden, just write in whatever style works for you and the story you want to tell. Optional details are optional.)
Another thing about the series that interests me is the ahistorical nature of the space program it depicts, even apart from Moonbeam's own long and varied career within it. All the astronauts are different, and they go to the moon more often and in different-shaped machines than in real history. There's also the fact that one of the main recurring human characters, who works on the rocket base, is African American and nobody ever finds this fact worthy of comment.
(Considering how optimistic the series is about some things, if you do go the route of exploring historical parallels, you may find that things get less cheerful than the series norm. I don't object to that as such, if it serves the story, but I would prefer that the overall mood of the story ended up fairly positive, thanks.)
Finally: Thank you again for being a part of Yuletide. I hope this extremely long letter has been some use to you, but if you have an idea you'd love to write in one of these fandoms that isn't any of the ideas I've suggested, that's fine too. I'd rather receive a story you were enthusiastic about and loved working on than one you had to force yourself into an uncomfortable shape to write, even if it isn't precisely what I asked for. Who knows, it might turn out to be a story I never knew I needed.
