Yuletide letter

Hey Yuletide author!

This is actually my first-ever post on DW, for which I apologize. I'm sure it's not very useful to you in figuring out what's up with me, generally speaking. So: I'm a 31-year-old queer cis-lady, very bookish, reading about history and listening to David Bowie in the constant rain of the Pacific Northwest. You can get some idea of my general aesthetic from my Tumblr. 

I...really am just gonna love anything you write for me! But below are some ideas that might be useful.


Story-wise, I love slash and femmeslash (looooove femmeslash), and am also very happy with gen and het. In fanfic and published fiction, I have a particular love for the atmospheric; for stories with very vivid, evocative settings; for witty banter; for unresolved mystery or narrative tension; for endings that could be interpreted several different ways; for complex characters who have redeeming qualities, but who are not necessarily "nice people."

I love porn. I especially adore sex that complicates rather than resolves tension, or sex that is really rooted in the characters of the participants involved. Sex scenes that have underlying motivating factors beyond simple lust (e.g., sadness, relief, insecurity, exerting dominance, desperation, the desire to avoid a certain thought or topic of conversation, etc.) are almost always my favorites. I don't mind darkness or the unsettling, with exceptions listed below. I love it when sexuality is depicted against the standard gender script (e.g., there is tenderness in a m/m pair, or desperate, rough sex in a f/f pairing). I also love androgyny, gender-bending, cross-dressing, disguise, and the like - not even necessarily in a sexy context, although that's always good, too. :-)

General squicks include: pregnancy, kids, rape (Sleep No More might be something of an exception to this), cruelty to animals (I know there's canonical cruelty to animals in Sleep No More, but I'd love it if it weren't stressed), major character death.

Info on specific requests:


Sleep No More - Punchdrunk
I've only seen Sleep No More once, and I was UTTERLY CAPTIVATED by both Lady MacBeth (who I followed for a complete cycle, and who took my hands and smeared blood on them) and the Boy Witch (who I followed for another complete cycle, and who gave me his wet trousers to hold when he took them off in the bathroom). 

Lady MacBeth doesn't show up on the character selection, but I'd love anything to do with either (or both!) of these characters. I loved the Boy Witch's aggressive hate-sex homoerotic dancing, especially in and around the old telephone booth (with someone who I believe was Duncan? but I'm not sure), and Lady MacBeth's...everything to do with Lady MacBeth, really. I guess, with Lady MacBeth, I especially loved how, as her madness escalated, she began interacting more and more with the spectres/audience members.

In general, Sleep No More is just so deliciously gothic and mysterious, and I would love anything that evokes that atmosphere, and the general, sexually-charged, mysterious murderousness of the whole thing. My section on Rebecca might also give some ideas, since the two storylines are connected. I'm also familiar with Shakespeare's MacBeth and adore Shakespearean language, so if you have the urge to reference it, I will get you. :-)


Gosford Park
Gosford Park! Talk about witty banter. I love this film for the sardonic class-consciousness, and the clever dialogue, and the mix of repression and shamelessness, and the hidden interpersonal dynamics constantly going on beneath the surface. 

I adore the idea of Elsie and Mary focused femmeslash, either before or after Elsie's dismissal, but I also LOVE - I mean LOVE - anything to do with Maggie Smith's Constance Trentham character. It goes against some of the story-building of the actual film, but I love the idea that Constance Trentham knows pretty much everything that goes on everywhere she travels, including at Gosford Park, and is basically a wry, claret-swilling commentator on all society gossip since the 1870s. I also love the idea of a developing bond of mutual respect between her and Mary, which would be an awesome focus for a gen story, should you so desire.

I also adore the unapologetic ennui of Kristin Scott-Thomas's Sylvia McCordle. Just throwin' that out there for the sake of completeness.


Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

Given what I wrote above about Sleep No More, it's not surprising that I love the menacing, gothic atmosphere of Rebecca; the way Manderley is a character in its own right, with all kinds of nooks and crannies good for secret rendezvous and squirreling things away; the kind of uncertain relationship between the DeWinter household and their neighbors, where it's never clear whether everyone hates them or not; and, of course, the exact nature of the relationship between Danny and Rebecca. 

If you're inclined to take a more gen approach, anything involving the atmosphere and setting of Manderley would be amazing. Especially if it explored Rebecca DeWinter's psychology a bit: maybe delving into her back-story, or giving her perspective on her marriage to Max DeWinter, or just...finding any way you can to make her a more fully-rounded, complex character. Ideally without completely erasing the things that made her unsympathetic in the source material. 

 

Or, if you wanted to go the femmesleash route, that is way cool as well! I'm pretty convinced that some kind of sexual and/or romantic relationship between Danny and Rebecca is more or less canon, but I'd be interested to see the ins and outs of that explored. What was the power dynamic like between them? Was Danny just another toy to Rebecca, or was there a more mutual connection between them? Or was one of them never really sure about the answer to that question? And so on. 

Oh, and I am very familiar with both DuMaurier's novel and Hitchcock's film adaptation, so drawing on either or both is lovely.



Anyway, I'm really just thrilled with whatever you come up with, so thanks for reading!