Dear Yuletide '25 Author

[robberbaroness]

Welcome to the best time of the year, and thank you for joining me in my corner!

General likes: Fairy tales, gothic literature, film noir, revenge tragedies, bodice rippers, melodrama, dark comedy, heroine/villain/hero love triangles, heroine/villain dynamics, rescue romance, mythology, maledom (non and dubcon are fine), BDSM, bondage, character studies, what-if AUs, genre swapping AUs, vampires, folklore, knight and lady dynamics, epistolary fic,  interactive fiction.   

General DNWs: Character bashing, comeplay, ABO, scat or watersports, pushing away female characters, fetish universes, fully mundane AUs for fantastical settings, unrequested identity headcanons, harm to cute animals

BraveStarr

BraveStarr, J.B. McBride, Tex Hex, Thirty-Thirty

Such a fun show, and it’s criminal that it’s so obscure! If you want to do a canon-typical escapade for the gang that would be fun, or you can experiment with alternate setups. I would love to see all these characters in a Spaghetti Western! Or play the terrifying Stampede for eldritch horror, and our heroes as a Call of Cthulhu party! (Try not to kill off the heroes, though.) I was extremely happy for BraveStarr/JB to be confirmed in the movie, and would be happy to see more of that, though friendship is also okay if you’re feeling genfic. And what about Tex Hex teetering on the verge of redemption? I will honestly just be super happy to get fic for this fandom at all!

Regarding characters, you can drop any single one except BraveStarr if your story demands it.

Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty: A Gothic Romance

Aurora, Caradoc, Leo

This ballet was just made for me, just absolutely made for me.  A love triangle between a kindhearted maiden, a predatory vampire and an innocent youth?  That’s just my favorite dynamic ever!  And everything was so pretty! You could give me the darkest, wickedest captivity story about Aurora and Caradoc. Rescue at the end by Leo is welcome but optional (this is the character exception- I like Leo, but you can focus on just Aurora and Caradoc.) And if they have escaped, where are they going from there?

You could also flesh out a bit about the vampire world.  How are a pair of sweet kids like Aurora and Leo going to adjust to what they have become?  Will they be outcasts in vampire society or come to rule it? 

And of course, how will all the characters integrate- or not- to waking up in the 21st century?

The Devil Came Up to Boston - Adam Ezra Group (Song)

The Devil, Sully

What can I say, this is just a really funny song! There are a lot of plot hooks you can work with here. The devil going to a series of different locations to embody stereotypes and challenge people for their souls! Sully having more urban fantasy adventures in Boston! The Dropkick Murphies just showing up whenever magical music showdowns happen so they can jam! While I didn't nominate the video, you can also pull from that, with a foul-mouthed band shocking and terrifying a talent show.

You can drop either of the characters so long as you have one of them.

Waxwork

Sarah, China, Dracula, Marquis de Sade

Such a fun, silly movie!  And absolutely perfect for anyone who likes to read or write Problematic Fanfiction.  You can write about all four of those characters, or just focus on one of the two heroine/villain ships (China/Dracula or Sarah/de Sade.)  The movie (and its sequel) have lots of references and homages to classic horror movies, so that would be fun to see here- what about the girls falling through other horror movies, like in the sequel?  Or tell me about the women whose situations the girls found themselves in, Dracula’s victim and the Marquis’ plaything.  Tell me how they ended up in those situations.  Alternately, what if they found themselves in America in the 1980s when Sarah and China took their places? In any case, this is a great place to pile on all the gothic tropes and aesthetics your heart desires- just please don’t kill the girls (the bad guys are fair game!). If you write sex, I know the real life Marquis de Sade was into some of my DNWs, but try to steer clear of them if you can.

If you want, you can just use Dracula and China or Sarah and the Marquis

The Ugly Stepsister

I swear, I nominated Alma- I don’t know why the tags didn’t show it! I was fascinated by how Alma, though nobody in the film notices, is the actual fairy tale heroine- she’s the most compassionate and plucky, and most importantly, she’s the youngest of three sisters! I would love to see her get her own dark fairy tale to live out after she leaves to seek her fortune while caring for Elvira- bittersweet or happy endings are fine, but please don’t kill either of them off! I would also rather you don’t make Alma out to be a villain- I liked how morally ambiguous she was, not fully sympathetic but never really doing anything wrong (except for being rude one time immediately after her father died.) I love dark fairytales that have a touch of melancholy, and this fit so perfectly.

A Ghastly Affair

If anyone else has played or read this, I will be so happy! Could you give me a story in the setting, perhaps using the novel creation system in the Presenter’s Guide? You can include any of the historical or gothic canon characters they stat up in the supplements, and any of the classes (though maybe not the “Gypsy” unless you’re confident you can do something sensitive with that.) You can make this ghastly and lurid (even licentious and vile!) just give me a good, fucked-up gothic story!