Dear Author, (Yuletide 2018)

[jenett]

Yay! Hello, dear Yuletide author (and whoever else might be reading this.)

I love Yuletide, it’s one of the highlights of the year for me, seeing all the amazing stories and snippets and scenes and explorations people come up with. I’ve loved all my gifts so far, and I bet I’ll love yours, too.


Want an idea of what kinds of things I like and write? Most of my journal is locked, but my Yuletide tag has public entries with comments on gifts, rec lists, and past letters. It’s safe to assume that things from past lists are still true unless I mention otherwise. I’m also Jenett on AO3, if you want to check out things I’ve written.

Things I like a lot

Worldbuilding. Especially worldbuilding that illuminates or explains something in canon. Sense of place is part of several of these canons, and that’s something I like especially.

People being competent, and I like all kinds of competence. Technical. Interpersonal. Knowledge. Problem-solving.

People being good to each other. Obviously, drama and narrative tension are things, but (especially with the world as it is) I’d love a story where people being good to each other is a key part of what happens.

Geekery is a fine thing, and I am here for it. (Magical theory, folklore, literature, cooking, crafting… you name it.)

Please don’t (do not wants)

Explicit sex, graphic violence, language choice, etc. that go beyond where the canon goes. (Not a huge issue for my choices, but it’s nice to be clear.)

Non-canon relationships, AUs, and crossovers all depend a lot on the set-up for me, and that’s generally going to take more words than is reasonable to expect in a Yuletide story.

(There are a couple of exceptions on the AU and crossover front, in the respective canon sections, those are fine. Also, feel free to inquire through the mods if you have a plot bunny that won’t let you go.)

I don’t like narratives which rely on teachers or mentors being stupid, entirely inobservant, abusive, etc. (Obviously, some are, but when most every teacher in the narrative is, it’s awful for me.)

Agatha Christie’s Marple

Characters requested
Frankie Derwent
Bobby Attfield

What I love about this canon

I was rewatching the series over the last month, and while a lot of the plots are mangled from the original stories, there’s a lot of compelling little details in there.

In this case, the two main characters from “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans”, Frankie Derwent and Bobby Atfield. The plot (which is admittedly weird and tangled) is totally not what I’m here for in this or for this request, so feel free to riff off events from the novel, or make all of the plot very vague back reference. Except for the part where Frankie and Bobby end up together.

I love Frankie’s charging in, and trying to figure out things on the fly. I love Bobby’s common sense, even if it’s sometimes coming from a “Wait, what have I gotten myself into, wait.” I love his ridiculous attempt to be a chauffeur. I love them collaborating, and the unevenness of it, and yet how it works out.

Ideas

Fundamentally, I want a “What happens next” - they’re clearly in love, but how does that play out for them? In the TV version, they’re from different social classes but without a completely gaping chasm (the way Bobby’s mother defers to Frankie) and Frankie has quite a lot of social privilege and freedom.

I’d love to see more of how that plays out for them:

• Bobby meeting more people in her social circle (and perhaps noticing something off?).


• Frankie taking a job somewhere to investigate something, and having to learn to codeswitch so people take her the right way?


• Perhaps the two of them travelling and encountering something mysterious?


• Or the two of them twenty years (or forty) down the road, when they know each other so much better, and the world keeps giving them puzzles…

Don’t feel you need to write casefic - it’s grand if that’s where your desires lead you, but I’d also be fine with something that’s more of a character study or a look at pieces of their relationship.

This is also a canon where I’d find a crossover or AU fascinating, especially how they’d deal with a magical world and the sometimes arcane rules of such places (the Potterverse, Narnia, Oz…)

Rivers of London

Characters requested
Abigail Kamara
Cecilia Tyburn

What I love about the canon

Detailed worldbuilding. An amazing sense of place. The way the magic works. The ensemble cast, and so many different views of the world, and the way magic works (and should work).

I've had the pleasure of being in London multiple times, and one of the things I enjoy about this canon is the sense of rootedness, of having walked through Russell Square and wondering exactly where the Folly is.

For these characters, I picked them because I really like their independence of thought, the way they do the thing they think needs doing, the way they think it should be done. And in both cases, they're willing to put in a lot of long-term work to get there.

Ideas

I requested Abigail and Cecilia, but feel free to include whatever other characters intrigue you or make sense, and also to focus on one or the other. (I also requested Rivers of London last year, and got an amazing story, so if you want to see my notes for last year, they’re over here...)

I’d love to see more fic about Abigail straddling the gulf between her magical studies and the rest of her life.

• What if Abigail got tossed back in time (the 20s or 30s, say), knowing some forma, but without any of her other connections? (totally fine AU to explore here!)


• What does she get up to with people her own age? How does she explain the Folly to them? What happens when she can’t for some reason?


• What happens if a school assignment leads her to investigate something on her own?


• What happens if a teacher or someone at her school or from her bit of the world tries to keep her from helping at the Folly?

Alternately, if you’d rather focus on Lady Ty, I’d be particularly interested in a plot or project of hers not long before the books starts and everything begins to change. How did she build up her empire of favours and connections? Did that ever go wrong on her? (and will her sisters remind her?) What's her relationship with Mama Thames like in private?

If you're inclined to put the two of them in the same place, many of the above prompts also make sense, but I'd love to see Lady Ty disagreeing with a bit of Abigail's education, or making sure she learns something specific (uncomfortably, perhaps). The fact Lady Ty's kids are around Abigail's age (give or take) is a thing I keep thinking about and coming back to - are there interesting interactions there?

Notes for this canon
I have read the comics, but specifics from things in that format do not stick in my head well, so please don’t feel like you need to include details only found there.

Sparrow Hill Road

Character requested
Rose Marshall

What I love about this canon

Again, the worldbuilding, and the range of interactions. How the magical parts work, and interweave with story and myth and urban legend. Rose’s determination about moving forward, even when any sensible person would have given up long ago. (And oh, I loved the tail end of Girl in A Green Silk Dress. Such a good boy, and his people.)

Again, I find the role of place fascinating here. I was born and raised in suburban Massachusetts, but I've also spent years living in Minnesota (a rather different landscape), in Michigan, and in rural Maine, and the sense of how spaces are different in different parts of the country that runs through this book is one of the things I love about it. More of that would make me particularly happy.

Ideas

I’d love to see more of Rose’s interactions with people as she’s travelled - we get plenty of these in the first book, but I’m hungry for more. I’d particularly love to see more of how she deals with changing times and customs, or relationships she’s built up over time with people we don’t see as much in the books.

It's fine to include things from both books, but I'm more interested in the interstitial and liminal spaces here. It might be particularly cool to have Rose wander into another urban legend or myth or bit of folklore.

Society of Gentlemen - K. J. Charles

Characters requested
David Cyprian
Richard Vane
(But include anyone you see fit!)

What I love about this canon

I love the work of KJ Charles for a lot of reasons - but one of them is her ability to mix really thoughtful ‘what are the challenges of being alive in this time and place’ with complex romances, where people have to figure out how to make things work.

The depth and intricacy in this series is particularly great - both the historical details, and the challenges of people falling for other people where there are real complex ethical complexities going on, and trying to make that work out. I also love the friendships of the men involved, how they stay friends even when that's terribly hard, or when they've been badly hurt and eventually sort that out. (Richard, looking at you.)

Ideas

Basically, I’d like to see more of David and Richard after the third book.

• Is there a time when Cyprian has to use all of his skills (again!) to get Richard (or others) out of trouble, but it’s a lot harder because of what he and Richard have now?


• Does a bit of Cyprian’s past come back to haunt him?


• What if some gossip gets the right end of the stick about what’s going on, entirely by accident?


• Or someone tries to get Richard properly married off? (At the end of the book, it looked like that might not be his brother and sister-in-law, but there are plenty of options here!)

A note for this canon
Sex is great! This is a fantastic example of ‘it’s entirely in keeping with the canon’. On the other hand, don’t feel you have to write smut to make me happy or if your story takes you somewhere else.

Medieval Manuscript Illustrations

Characters requested
Barnacle Goose (Medieval Manuscript Illustrations)
Battle Snail (Medieval Manuscript Illustrations)
(Feel free to include penis trees if they amuse you.)

Things I love about this canon

Look, my undergrad background was as a medievalist, I’m a librarian, and over the course of my life I have taken about three classes (and done a lot of other reading) that includes the ridiculousness of medieaval manuscript illumination.

(The barnacle geese also remind me of the kitten tree on Cetaganda, in the Miles Vorkosigan books.)

Want examples? The nominated artworks post on yuletide has rounded up handy links to explore.

Ideas

I am here for the ridiculousness. This is a canon where, obviously, it might be really intriguing to play with the context:

• What if it’s a world where all those things actually existed? (And whatever other ridiculous illuminations you want to add?)


• Epistolary (or article/comments) would be amusing. Or an exhibition catalog. (This one, from last year, on daemons in medieaval iconography, is a lovely example of the type of thing I mean here.)


• As suggested above, fantasy seems sort of obvious here, but it’s also possible to take this in an SFnal direction.


• I am intrigued by a setting where these (and other things) were set up as a puzzle for some reason, and the challenges of people introduced to that situation, and trying to figure out. (I might have been wathcing a lot of The Good Place recently, and thinking about internal narrative and expectations vs. external forces.)

Thank you again, dear author, for whatever you write!

Comments

[killing_rose]

Note: any links were lost.

[jenett]

They're working for me (I just tested them again) - if they're not for you (or anyone else who reads this...), can you let me know which one and what happens, if you get a chance?

[jenett]

And in further investigation, I did figure out I'd lost the link for the reference in the medieval illuminations one, and have fixed that, so if it's anything else, pointers would be very helpful!