Yuletide letter
Oct. 20th, 2015 03:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eccentric_hatHey there, Yuletide writer! I'm super excited to be getting a story from you. This is my second year doing Yuletide, and honestly nothing much about my tastes has changed since I wrote last year's letter, which in retrospect looks a little like overkill. I like character development, history, nature, the history of science (very fond of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century hobbyist natural historians collecting shells and cocoons), fairy tales and their retellings, unfashionable Victorian writers like Dickens, and stories about women (this may not be obvious from my character requests this time around, but it's true!). I read literary fiction and genre fiction and poetry and a lot of essays. This year I read a lot of books about the ocean. Sometimes I get mad at Napoleon. I don't have any triggers. I'm not into fiction that is dark for the sake of darkness, but I like and respect stories where actions have consequences (this is part of why I like Rev. so much). And I'll be celebrating on Christmas Day, so I might not read and comment super promptly, but rest assured I'll be looking forward to your story very much.
Here are my requests! I've added some extra rambling about Mr Simonelli, and otherwise these are the same as my prompts on AO3.
Mr Simonelli or the Fairy Widower – Susanna Clarke
Character: Alessandro Simonelli
Prompt: I have a weird soft spot for Mr Simonelli, and I'm really curious how things might go for him after the story ends. (I'm not married to the idea that it goes well or that it goes badly--there's a lot of scope there.) Alternately, I'd also enjoy a fic set before the story, say in his university days, that might show how he made such vicious enemies.
I'm kind of picky about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell fic, which is why I haven't requested it (it's not fair to ask an anonymous author to comply with my headcanons), but I genuinely don't know what I want to happen to this guy. The thing is, even though he is arrogant and makes enemies easily, he also wins people over--consider just how many women he successfully becomes engaged to in this story--and he actually exerts himself for other people quite a lot. It's easy to get so stuck on his hauteur that you almost miss the fact he has just saved the day. And I'm interested in his fairy/human identity crisis, how he feels betrayed by his own face and cleverness. Although he doesn't appear as a character in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a footnote mentions him as one of the humans who have been rulers in Faerie. I'd be interested to see more or him as a king, or more of him at Cambridge, or really anywhere in his life story where you got to explore his bizarre identity issues and/or contemplate just what he would be like as a priest.
Fandom: Rev. (TV)
Any Character
Prompt: What a good show. What a sad comedy, what a funny tragedy; I adore this show and find its melancholy, even its bleakness, oddly comforting, though I also enjoy the comedy of it (e.g. the fact that Adam's crisis of faith in the first series is kicked off by a bad review online). I just want to see more of these characters. Archdeacon Robert is a particular favorite of mine; he's fierce and powerful and ambitious and clever, and he's hidden and vulnerable and tender and devout. I also relate painfully much to Adam's vocational uncertainty, Alex's concerned attempts not to be pigeonholed as a vicar's wife, Ellie's desperate competence in the face of hard circumstances, and all the other characters I didn't have room to nominate. I guess none of that constitutes a prompt, though. Maybe: Adam in seminary? Any of the characters after the end of the show? Adam and Alex in their early relationship? Ellie getting to have a life? Archdeacon Robert doing whatever the heck it is he does when he's not cruising around in a black car?
Fandom: Drunk History
Any Character
Prompt: ANYTHING. This is kind of my safety fandom--you could watch one third of one episode and that would be enough canon review for me. It might be fun to see drunk history of something fictional, or something science-fictional, or some kind of alternate history. Or pick a fictional character to tell a drunk history. Or write about what Derek Waters might think about American history if he takes everyone's stories at face value. I'm so easy when it comes to this one. Just have fun.
Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Character: Sphene
Prompt: Cousin! I really enjoy Sphene's chilliness and inhumanity and playfulness, and she/it seems like potentially a super interesting way to explore parts of the universe we don't see directly portrayed in the books. I'd be happy with a lot of different things with Sphene: backstory (maybe even before the empire?), or Sphene's take on Mianaai, or more about the game with Translator Zeiat, or something about Breq as seen through Sphene's eyes.
Here are my requests! I've added some extra rambling about Mr Simonelli, and otherwise these are the same as my prompts on AO3.
Mr Simonelli or the Fairy Widower – Susanna Clarke
Character: Alessandro Simonelli
Prompt: I have a weird soft spot for Mr Simonelli, and I'm really curious how things might go for him after the story ends. (I'm not married to the idea that it goes well or that it goes badly--there's a lot of scope there.) Alternately, I'd also enjoy a fic set before the story, say in his university days, that might show how he made such vicious enemies.
I'm kind of picky about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell fic, which is why I haven't requested it (it's not fair to ask an anonymous author to comply with my headcanons), but I genuinely don't know what I want to happen to this guy. The thing is, even though he is arrogant and makes enemies easily, he also wins people over--consider just how many women he successfully becomes engaged to in this story--and he actually exerts himself for other people quite a lot. It's easy to get so stuck on his hauteur that you almost miss the fact he has just saved the day. And I'm interested in his fairy/human identity crisis, how he feels betrayed by his own face and cleverness. Although he doesn't appear as a character in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a footnote mentions him as one of the humans who have been rulers in Faerie. I'd be interested to see more or him as a king, or more of him at Cambridge, or really anywhere in his life story where you got to explore his bizarre identity issues and/or contemplate just what he would be like as a priest.
Fandom: Rev. (TV)
Any Character
Prompt: What a good show. What a sad comedy, what a funny tragedy; I adore this show and find its melancholy, even its bleakness, oddly comforting, though I also enjoy the comedy of it (e.g. the fact that Adam's crisis of faith in the first series is kicked off by a bad review online). I just want to see more of these characters. Archdeacon Robert is a particular favorite of mine; he's fierce and powerful and ambitious and clever, and he's hidden and vulnerable and tender and devout. I also relate painfully much to Adam's vocational uncertainty, Alex's concerned attempts not to be pigeonholed as a vicar's wife, Ellie's desperate competence in the face of hard circumstances, and all the other characters I didn't have room to nominate. I guess none of that constitutes a prompt, though. Maybe: Adam in seminary? Any of the characters after the end of the show? Adam and Alex in their early relationship? Ellie getting to have a life? Archdeacon Robert doing whatever the heck it is he does when he's not cruising around in a black car?
Fandom: Drunk History
Any Character
Prompt: ANYTHING. This is kind of my safety fandom--you could watch one third of one episode and that would be enough canon review for me. It might be fun to see drunk history of something fictional, or something science-fictional, or some kind of alternate history. Or pick a fictional character to tell a drunk history. Or write about what Derek Waters might think about American history if he takes everyone's stories at face value. I'm so easy when it comes to this one. Just have fun.
Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Character: Sphene
Prompt: Cousin! I really enjoy Sphene's chilliness and inhumanity and playfulness, and she/it seems like potentially a super interesting way to explore parts of the universe we don't see directly portrayed in the books. I'd be happy with a lot of different things with Sphene: backstory (maybe even before the empire?), or Sphene's take on Mianaai, or more about the game with Translator Zeiat, or something about Breq as seen through Sphene's eyes.
