breathedout | Yuletide 2017 Dear Author letter

Hello fantastic Yuletide match!

Thank you so much for making me a thing! I love it already; you plainly have great taste. I only use this journal for Dear Author letters, so If you have a hankering to poke around the internet for a broad sense of what I'm into, my Tumblr (or, obviously, my AO3 page) is probably your best bet. In short, I am a more-or-less lesbian bibliophile, originally from the Pacific NW and now resident in southern California. Copy/pasting the following from previous letters:

Particular loves of mine include: formidable yet complex women being formidable and complex together; sex writing that is emotionally nuanced and/or ratchets up the narrative tension more than it resolves it; unreliable narrators; atmospheric settings; lovely turns of phrase; strong narrative voices, and weird narrative tricks.

Squicks: My huge, body-horror-level squick is pregnancy and babies; please avoid them if at all possible. Also I'd love it if you'd avoid animal cruelty or death. Other than that, I'm up for pretty much whatever, including dub-con or even non-con as long as they're acknowledged as such within the context of the story. I write a ton of porn and I love to read it, but it's in no way required or expected, so just follow your muse!

Feel free to disregard fandom-specific ramblings; but if you're interested, I've gone into a bit more detail below. Thanks again for writing me a thing! You rock. :-D

Jessica Jones (Jessica Jones, Trish Walker)
Jessica is a close contender for my favorite character to come out of the Marvel TV/movie universe. I love her messiness, the way she struggles to commune with other people and yet obviously feels deeply connected to (a few of) them. I also like that her commitment to an abstract conception of "the greater good" is very limited, and doesn't extend much beyond those few deep connections—although not as limited as she'd like.

The Jessica/Trish relationship is one that I natively read more like sisters, but I can certainly dig a more sexual/romantic vibe on it. Either way, I love the tangible weight of history they share, and I'd love a deeper dive on the baggage that obviously exists between them, be that in that form of a flashback to their shared youth, or an adult-era outtake or extension of canon.

Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens (Eugene Wrayburn, Mortimer Lightwood)
I was so tickled to see these two nominated this year. I think the thing that most caught my attention about them, when I was reading the book, was finding this very witty, irreverent, urbane, queer-coded Wildean duo shacked up in a Dickens novel. It was almost as if they had wandered backward in time, from the Late to the High Victorian period, to find themselves accidentally ensconced in a much more earnestly moralistic genre than they would really prefer. If you wanted to run in a meta direction with this, Jasper Fforde style, I'd be delighted to read about Eugene & Mortimer's misadventures traversing the Book World—maybe they're in some kind of bookish witness protection program? Maybe there was a snafu with some hashish and they woke up on the misty banks of the Thames in 1865?

If that's too wacky for you, anything where they get to be united in wittiness while dubiously lifting their eyebrows at those around them will amuse and delight. I enjoy the concept of a subversion of the "Wrayburn is reborn and reformed" trope at the end of the novel, possibly one that allows the Wrayburn/Lightwood menage to continue uninterrupted, and anything that complicates the unbearably upright morality of Lizzy (without demonizing her) would be a cherry on top of my sundae.

Golden Age of Piracy RPF (Anne Bonny, Mary Read)
I recently ran across this anecdote, transcribed by an author believed to be Daniel Defoe. I really love it, and would love to see it expanded. Particularly in ways that play on Defoe's (or whomever's) unreliability as a receptacle of pirate lore who had no personal experience living as a pirate. Was his informant biased? Was his informant trying to convey things (or conceal things) that he didn't realize because of his own limitations? Were the intentions and perceptions of Read and Bonny so heterosexual as Defoe makes out, or was the gender ambiguity and nuance of the situation one of the draws for these women? I'd love to see a development of Read and Bonny's early (or later!) relationship.

Les liaisons dangereuses (La Marquise de Merteuil)
Merteuil DELIGHTS me; anything to do with her is phenomenal. I viscerally enjoy her scheming and conniving; I love her weird dangerous chemistry with Valmont. I REALLY love her in the Cecile de Volanges corruption arc. I would adore any extrapolation on either of these themes, either AU or canon setting. I am also perpetually tremendously impressed by Laclos's insight into how much harder Merteuil has to work than Valmont does—in order to take what she wants, not only does she have to manipulate her marks, but she has to quietly arrange things so that if they go to ruin her as a result of her liaisons with them, they'll find they can't do so without unacceptable sacrifice. Laclos is also at the top of his game in the letters that Merteuil writes; the reader can glimpse three or four angles she's working simultaneously, and she always keeps very much in the forefront of her mind that she's writing to a specific person, from whom she wants a specific thing. Any elaboration of the Merteuil/Volanges and/or Merteuil/Valmont relationships in light of these things would be divine. (Note that I don't want or need any of them to be good or redeemed people; their despicable natures are one of the glories of the novel.)