Yuletide 2020 Letter
Oct. 16th, 2020 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricardienneDear Yuletide Writer & Gentle Passers-by
Thanks for checking out my Yuletide Letter (I'm ricardienne here, but sigaloenta on ao3 and tumblr). I'm requesting canons with tiny to non-existent fandoms: A Lady of Quality - Frances Hodgson Burnett, 신입사관 구해령 | Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung, and Bright Smoke Cold Fire Duology - Rosamund Hodge. So the fact that you're even reading my letter makes me incredibly happy; I like to talk about why I like things, and so I've rattled on about each canon and given some possible prompts below, but the main thing is: I will be incredibly grateful and thrilled with any fic you write. The first part of the letter has general details about what I like and what my DNWs are; after that, I have specific prompts for each canon I'm requesting.
Here are some things that I like in general, and would be overjoyed to see in any fic for any canon:-Loyalty/fealty
-Conflicting loyalties
-Close relationships intersecting with unequal power dynamics
-Intense friendships
-Platonic life partners
-Comedies of manners
-Court-culture,
-Social intrigue
-Mirrors for princes
-In-universe art/literature/music/rhetoric/pop-culture/food/ritual/folklore
-Difficult decisions about whether to do what is right or what is expedient/conducive to survival, having to compromise your principles, and finding ways to live with the consequences.
-Unreliable narrators; protagonists with imperfect information.
-Linguistic games and code-switching, puns, allusions to other works of literature, whether in-universe or extra-universe
And, correspondingly, DNWs: death of canon characters beyond canon deaths; apocalypse and large-scale destruction*; blowing up planets*; extreme violence & gore; graphic psychological torture or/and breakdown*; A/B/O; dehumanization; noncon*; non-canon incest; mundane and/or modern AUs; unremittingly bleak endings; fic centered on the struggles of a character with a real-world marginalized identity*.
[*mentions of canon events/characterizations/plotlines that deal with all of these things are fine. But for this exchange, I would prefer fic that didn't focus on these aspects of canon.]
Specific Canons
1. A Lady of Quality - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character: Clorinda Wildairs
What I love about this book: how absolutely over the top everything is; Clorinda the haughty, self-willed near-anti-hero protagonist; a woman in a romance novel getting to be the "tall dark and lordly, recognizes no law but their own sense of honor" one; Clorinda's completely unapologetic self-possessed action and reactions and decisions; the fact that Clorinda is an avowed atheist for most of the book; the way the narrator is completely in love with Clorinda; look: Clorinda is everything I want in a guilty-pleasure power-fantasy historical novel heroine, ok?
Canon specific DNWs: animal abuse, Clorinda/John Oxeton (brief mentions of canon ok); extensive focus on Christianity/conversion narratives.
Prompt Ideas:There's that aside about Clorinda making it a point to seek out and rescue young women who have been wronged by well-born libertines: how about the completely over the top power fantasy where she doesn't just rescue victims but also coldly and dispassionately offs the perpetrators and hides them under her settee.
2. 신입사관 구해령 | Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung
Character: Goo Hae-ryung
What I love about this show: Hae-ryung's intellectual confidence and curiosity, unafraid frankness, clever humor, and moral seriousness; Hae-ryung's relationships with the other female historians; Hae-ryung and Min U-won's mentor-mentee-to-mutual respect relationship; Min U-won and Yi Jin's friendship and the tensions their respective positions place on it; useless noblemen of the scholar class being dragged for not being able to carry even a single stick of wood; everything about and everyone in the Office of Records; the way historiography and future memory get weaponized in political and dynastic intrigue; the emphasis on historiographical integrity and independence, and the importance of recording and preserving the truth; angst about doing one's duty vs. doing what is right; everyone is constantly reflecting on what good government and good rulership and the right relationship between governors and governed mean.
Canon-specific DNWs: fic focusing on Dowon | Yi Rim and Hae-ryung’s relationship with him. (I'm completely fine with background Hae-ryung/Dowon!); focus on Christianity/conversion (background mention of canon events is fine).
Note: All my prompts are gen, but I'm open to any pairing(s) in the background as long as the romantic relationship isn't the center of the story. I requested Hae-ryung because adore her so much that I want to give you the maximum range of possible stories to put her in, but I very nearly requested all three nominated characters, and considered requesting "any", because Min U-won and Yi Jin are among my next favorite characters and their relationship (whether you ship them or just have them as close friends) is also something I would love to see more of.
Possible Prompts:
3. Bright Smoke Cold Fire Duology - Rosamund Hodge
Character: Mahyanai Runajo
What I love about this canon: the order of the sisters of Thorn and their implacable terrifying rituals; the doctrine of inkaan; doing terrible things that you know are terrible because the alternative is even worse; the weird and wonderfully gothic architecture of the convent; the lost library; the politics and beliefs and rituals of the different factions and clans of Viyara: the old nobility, the new-comer noble clans, the smaller groups of refugees; the Mahyanai's Epicureanism; the angst - oh god the angst; the sheer number of angry depressed girls with wielding different kinds of power;
What I love about Runajo: she's the bitter and angry and fiercely independent and frustrated and cynical and driven and lonely and deeply depressed character of my own heart.
Thanks for checking out my Yuletide Letter (I'm ricardienne here, but sigaloenta on ao3 and tumblr). I'm requesting canons with tiny to non-existent fandoms: A Lady of Quality - Frances Hodgson Burnett, 신입사관 구해령 | Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung, and Bright Smoke Cold Fire Duology - Rosamund Hodge. So the fact that you're even reading my letter makes me incredibly happy; I like to talk about why I like things, and so I've rattled on about each canon and given some possible prompts below, but the main thing is: I will be incredibly grateful and thrilled with any fic you write. The first part of the letter has general details about what I like and what my DNWs are; after that, I have specific prompts for each canon I'm requesting.
Here are some things that I like in general, and would be overjoyed to see in any fic for any canon:-Loyalty/fealty
-Conflicting loyalties
-Close relationships intersecting with unequal power dynamics
-Intense friendships
-Platonic life partners
-Comedies of manners
-Court-culture,
-Social intrigue
-Mirrors for princes
-In-universe art/literature/music/rhetoric/pop-culture/food/ritual/folklore
-Difficult decisions about whether to do what is right or what is expedient/conducive to survival, having to compromise your principles, and finding ways to live with the consequences.
-Unreliable narrators; protagonists with imperfect information.
-Linguistic games and code-switching, puns, allusions to other works of literature, whether in-universe or extra-universe
And, correspondingly, DNWs: death of canon characters beyond canon deaths; apocalypse and large-scale destruction*; blowing up planets*; extreme violence & gore; graphic psychological torture or/and breakdown*; A/B/O; dehumanization; noncon*; non-canon incest; mundane and/or modern AUs; unremittingly bleak endings; fic centered on the struggles of a character with a real-world marginalized identity*.
[*mentions of canon events/characterizations/plotlines that deal with all of these things are fine. But for this exchange, I would prefer fic that didn't focus on these aspects of canon.]
Specific Canons
1. A Lady of Quality - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Character: Clorinda Wildairs
What I love about this book: how absolutely over the top everything is; Clorinda the haughty, self-willed near-anti-hero protagonist; a woman in a romance novel getting to be the "tall dark and lordly, recognizes no law but their own sense of honor" one; Clorinda's completely unapologetic self-possessed action and reactions and decisions; the fact that Clorinda is an avowed atheist for most of the book; the way the narrator is completely in love with Clorinda; look: Clorinda is everything I want in a guilty-pleasure power-fantasy historical novel heroine, ok?
Canon specific DNWs: animal abuse, Clorinda/John Oxeton (brief mentions of canon ok); extensive focus on Christianity/conversion narratives.
Prompt Ideas:There's that aside about Clorinda making it a point to seek out and rescue young women who have been wronged by well-born libertines: how about the completely over the top power fantasy where she doesn't just rescue victims but also coldly and dispassionately offs the perpetrators and hides them under her settee.
- Wild Teenaged Clorinda getting into (and out of) some sort of scrape or adventure.
- Adult Clorinda gets to return to her cross-dressing & sneaking out hijinks in order to carry out some secret heist or other goal: while she and Anne are in France, maybe? Or in order to rescue a paper that would ruin the Earl? Or for a mission of personal vengeance or honor?
- The sisterly relationship between Clorinda and Anne (with some caveats). In the book, there’s the 11th hour reveal that Anne has been far more perceptive and an active agent all along; I would love a story in which we see more of that relationship. I’m not looking for Clorinda to realize that she’s treated Anne horribly and determine to make it up, and I don’t really want an Anne POV on Clorinda. But I would love to see Anne active behind the scenes even though Clorinda can’t or won’t let herself acknowledge it, or Clorinda come to have a tiny bit of understanding or appreciation for her sister.
- Make it gay! The dearth of female characters in this book is extremely frustrating, because Clorinda is everything I would want in one half of an f/f ship. Some possibilities might be:
- Genderswap the Duke of _______?
- Ret-con Anne as a distant cousin/dependent relation by marriage.
2. 신입사관 구해령 | Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung
Character: Goo Hae-ryung
What I love about this show: Hae-ryung's intellectual confidence and curiosity, unafraid frankness, clever humor, and moral seriousness; Hae-ryung's relationships with the other female historians; Hae-ryung and Min U-won's mentor-mentee-to-mutual respect relationship; Min U-won and Yi Jin's friendship and the tensions their respective positions place on it; useless noblemen of the scholar class being dragged for not being able to carry even a single stick of wood; everything about and everyone in the Office of Records; the way historiography and future memory get weaponized in political and dynastic intrigue; the emphasis on historiographical integrity and independence, and the importance of recording and preserving the truth; angst about doing one's duty vs. doing what is right; everyone is constantly reflecting on what good government and good rulership and the right relationship between governors and governed mean.
Canon-specific DNWs: fic focusing on Dowon | Yi Rim and Hae-ryung’s relationship with him. (I'm completely fine with background Hae-ryung/Dowon!); focus on Christianity/conversion (background mention of canon events is fine).
Note: All my prompts are gen, but I'm open to any pairing(s) in the background as long as the romantic relationship isn't the center of the story. I requested Hae-ryung because adore her so much that I want to give you the maximum range of possible stories to put her in, but I very nearly requested all three nominated characters, and considered requesting "any", because Min U-won and Yi Jin are among my next favorite characters and their relationship (whether you ship them or just have them as close friends) is also something I would love to see more of.
Possible Prompts:
- Anything set in the Office of Records: during canon, or post-canon. Honestly I'd be happy with low-key slice of life archival shenanigans involving Officer Yang, Officer Min, and everyone else in the office, with Hae-ryung at the center of it all.
- Hae-ryung, Eun-im, Ah-ran, and Sa-hui teaming up and supporting each other through whatever mess or political drama the Office is embroiled in.
- The day Hae-ryung gets promoted from apprentice to full historian.
- An AU in which Hae-ryung and Sa-hui become closer friends: after all, they do have in common a very strong stubborn streak of honor and doing what is right. What if Hae-ryung found out about the hold that the Second State Councillor has over Sa-hui? Could they team up to
fix everythingfight him? - Post-canon, when Min U-won has returned to the Office of Records and Hae-ryung has become an officer herself; their working relationship as colleagues (obviously U-won still has seniority and rank on Hae-ryung, but she's not an apprentice anymore), especially if Hae-ryung is up to her usual determination to Fix An Injustice.
- If I were to be honest, Historians vs. Power is the thing I love the absolute most about the show, and would love post-canon fic about any sort of dramatic conflict between the historians and the wishes of Yi Jin, where both parties are well-intentioned and determined and have very good reasons for what they are demanding, but the needs of raison d’état are at odds with the imperative to record the unadulterated truth.
- Alternately Hae-ryung pre-canon: I love Hae-ryung's relationhip with Jae-kyeong, and I'd love to see them at an earlier point in their lives as mildly eccentric scholar-siblings of modest means after they returned to Joseon; or how Hae-ryung discovered her passion for astronomy, or her (mis)adventures as a Reader. (Hints of Jae-kyeong's guilt and their Past are okay, but I'd prefer a story that didn't focus on it.)
3. Bright Smoke Cold Fire Duology - Rosamund Hodge
Character: Mahyanai Runajo
What I love about this canon: the order of the sisters of Thorn and their implacable terrifying rituals; the doctrine of inkaan; doing terrible things that you know are terrible because the alternative is even worse; the weird and wonderfully gothic architecture of the convent; the lost library; the politics and beliefs and rituals of the different factions and clans of Viyara: the old nobility, the new-comer noble clans, the smaller groups of refugees; the Mahyanai's Epicureanism; the angst - oh god the angst; the sheer number of angry depressed girls with wielding different kinds of power;
What I love about Runajo: she's the bitter and angry and fiercely independent and frustrated and cynical and driven and lonely and deeply depressed character of my own heart.
Possible Prompts:
- Pre-canon: Runajo's early days as a novice with the Sisters: how did she manage to alienate absolutely everyone and come to despite them so quickly while simultaneously becoming so good at the weaving and so knowledgable about the history and secrets of the sisters of Thorn?
- Post-canon: Runajo having to take a ruling role in the Cloister in a new world: how do you buid new religious practices and new worship when blood sacrifice is no longer necessary? Runajo balancing the demands her her family against Inyaan's expectation of her cooperation with her plans as Exalted against the Cloister's traditional autonomy while also trying to figure out whether she can become part of what Juliet/Romeo/Paris/Vai have together.
- Runajo becoming adviser and power-behind-the-throne to Inyaan as they work more closely together? I'm curious what Runajo will/would do with temporal power and the latitude of actually being in charge of of something and having the power to make things happen.
- THE LIBRARY. I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT THE LIBRARY.
- Post-canon: can Runajo go back, now that the Revenants are gone?
- During-canon: Runajo and Juliet (or Runajo/Juliet…) have to make another secret foray past the Revenants.
- Pre-canon: if world-building is your thing, the story of end of the library: the last sacrifice of so many, from the point of view of the Sister who wrought the final binding and paid the final debt of inkaan.
- Post-canon: can Runajo go back, now that the Revenants are gone?
